Word: sukeforth
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DIED. CLYDE SUKEFORTH, 98, Brooklyn Dodgers catcher, coach and scout who brought Jackie Robinson to the majors in 1947; in Waldoboro, Maine. Dodgers president Branch Rickey dispatched Sukeforth to scout Negro League shortstop Robinson despite an unwritten rule against black players. Sukeforth was also known to Brooklyn fans as the coach who in 1951 sent pitcher Ralph Branca rather than Carl Erskine in to face the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson in the ninth inning of the pennant play-off. On the second pitch, Thomson launched the "shot heard 'round the world," winning the pennant for the Giants...
...from personal experience and those less fortunate who remember it only from the worn pages of the record books, is brought back to life. The roll-call of greats that parade through Tygiel's pages pay ample testament to the glory of those days: Rickey, Robinson, Reese, Durocher, Sukeforth, Campanella, Veeck, Mays, Aaron, Newcombe...At the very least, we are grateful to Tygiel for culling these names and others from scrapbooks and long-destroyed card collections. And at the most, Tygiel transforms a dramatic but simple tale into a complex metaphor for some of the driving forces of modern society...
...manager, Max Carey, who is trying to turn a clownish collection of eccentrics into an orderly big-league machine, announced that he had traded Herman, Gilbert (third baseman) and Lombardi (huge catcher) to Cincinnati in even exchange for two in-fielders-Joe Stripp, Tony Cuccinello-and Catcher Clyde Sukeforth. In a trade with St. Louis, Brooklyn last month acquired a hard-hitting outfielder who may make up for the loss of Babe Herman -squat, red-faced Lewis ("Hack'') Wilson, who made 56 homeruns in 1930 and was last winter traded to St. Louis by the Chicago Cubs after...
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