Word: rickeys
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...After the 1942 season, Rickey left St. Louis for a potentially greener pasture, Brooklyn. While other clubs, waiting for the stars to return, played wartime baseball with tired old men, Rickey was signing bright young prospects to Brooklyn contracts before Uncle Sam took them away. At war's end, Rickey had the biggest batch of young baseball talent in the country. In 1947, the Old Mahatma had given Brooklyn its second pennant in 27 years...
...then, the Rickey sieve had dipped into the only pool of baseball talent left untouched, the Negro leagues. No one, perhaps not even Rickey himself, knew whether he was motivated chiefly by social justice or the chance for increased attendance. But when Jackie Robinson donned a Brooklyn uniform in 1947, Rickey had scored another first, paved the way for such other big-league stars as Larry Doby, Sam Jethroe and Don Newcombe...
This year, Rickey's Dodgers, winners of the 1949 National League pennant, were picked by the experts to run away with the pennant once more. Instead, in second place last week, they were taking the dust of the pennant-bound Phillies. Last week, also, a secret was out. Rickey, always a wise head at selling at the right time, had put his block of Brooklyn stock (25% interest) up for sale. The asking price: something around $1,000,000. The man on the inside track: New York Realtor William Zeckendorf, who specializes in big deals (he gathered...
What was the Old Mahatma up to? One rumor that swiftly went the rounds (though Rickey kept mum): he was bound for Pittsburgh, to start rebuilding that dismal, last-place disappointment. Rickey took his phone off the hook to avoid questions. A "source," speaking for him as "spokesmen" sometimes speak for U.S. Presidents, announced that, at 69, Rickey wanted to sell out "in order to get a little security in this troubled world...
That sounded reasonable enough, but hardly anybody in baseball really thought that Branch Rickey was trying to leave the game for good. Baseball rather expected that the Old Mahatma must have another new idea...