Word: rickeys
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What Durocher lacks as a manager is supplied by his wily and pious boss, Branch Rickey, known as The Brain. It is Rickey who assembles the circus, Ringmaster Durocher who snaps the whip. Boss Rickey has a great gift for spotting young talent, signing them up hastily, and training them wisely. In four years he has made Brooklyn's farm system baseball's biggest, outspreading the famed St. Louis Cardinals' system, which he built. The tree that Rickey is growing in Brooklyn (see chart) has 25 branches. This year 450 of its finest fruits were processed...
According to Rickey's "plan" (regarded with some cynicism in Brooklyn, where every loser chants "Wait till next year, we'll moider 'em"), the postwar Dodgers were not expected to win their first pennant until 1948. The Dodgers were a disorganized team last year, full of old men and greenhorns, but with them Durocher almost upset the plan. The Dodgers were in first place on the Fourth of July, by which time, according to an old but questionable tradition, pennant races are decided. (Durocher Dodgers, better at the start than in the stretch, have been first...
...tactician (once the game has started), Durocher is unsurpassed; as a yearlong strategist, says Rickey, "he ain't." Durocher has an instinct for knowing just what his players can do in any situation. He yanks pitchers quicker than any other manager, and the results usually bear out his judgment. Pete Reiser stole home so often on Durocher's orders (seven times in 1946) that rival pitchers got the jitters every time he reached third base. Brooklyn scored more runs last season on squeeze bunts than any other club. Says Leo: "I play hunches . . . maybe other managers are afraid...
...Beat You." Says Branch Rickey: "Leo can't be found mollycoddling a situation. He has marvelous aptitude-whether shooting pool, playing golf or squash or gin rummy-but no classical education. His marks in deportment may not have been too good. He came out of a pretty tough neighborhood in Springfield, Mass. with great energy which boiled down to three words: 'I'll beat you, I'll beat...
Whether Brooklyn wins or loses this week's playoffs, Dodger fans have a really rosy future to contemplate during the long winter months. The twelve-club farm chain collected by President Branch Rickey is busting with young talent. Most likely to succeed: Negro Jackie Robinson...