Word: rickeys
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...Branch Rickey was born too late to invent baseball, but he has thought up more innovations than anybody else in the history of the game...
...explanation of Rickey's career may be that husky, ham-handed Branch, who loves the game as much as the clicking of a Saturday-afternoon turnstile, was never a top man in baseball's ordinary occupations. In his 20s he broke into the majors as a catcher for the Cincinnati Reds, but he was no star-and besides, Pious Methodist Rickey refused to play on Sundays. He tried managing the St. Louis Browns, but he lacked the temperament to field-boss some of his hardbitten pros. He found himself, and became Innovator Rickey, when he put his college...
Turnstiles v. Brain. That was when Rickey took over the job of front-office man for the tail-end St. Louis Cardinals. Rickey and a new owner, the late Sam Breadon, found the club $175,000 in debt. General Manager Rickey tackled the job of putting the club on its feet...
...Rickey's farm system produced such stars as the Dean brothers, Johnny Mize, Pepper Martin and the rest of the Gashouse Gang, as well as Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial in later days. But the St. Louis turnstiles never clicked as fast as the Rickey brain. He became a master at selling his stars, at the right time, for fabulous prices. He sold a sore-armed Dizzy Dean for $185,000 at the precise moment when Dean was through as a pitcher, unloaded fading, 29-year-old Ducky Medwick for $135,500, and reached into his farm system...
...Rickey backpedaled a bit. "Perhaps only one or two men are guilty," he said. That night the aroused Dodgers went out and beat the Boston Braves, to end a four-game losing streak. The next night, even Rickey's needling didn't help. There was nothing complacent about the way the Dodgers were swinging at Vernon Bickford's pitches, but for the life of them they could...