Cardinals' ownership in 1964, apparently trying to get his old accomplice, Leo Durocher, hired to replace the fatherly manager, Johnny Keane.
As a young reporter in 1964, I got a glimpse of Rickey on the night the Cardinals surged into first place during a fantastic pennant race. We were in Keane's tiny office when a hidden door suddenly opened and beetle-browed, three-piece-suited Branch Rickey materialized, like Banquo's Ghost.
“Johnny Keane, you're a gosh-dang good manager!” Rickey thundered at the man he had been undermining for months. Then Rickey was gone. Keane won the World Series—and immediately quit the Cardinals to join the Yankees.
A year later, Rickey collapsed at a banquet in his honor, and he died soon afterward, just short of eighty-four. In essence, baseball's great teacher went out talking.
IX
THE NEGRO LEAGUES
W hile seeking talent for the Cardinals in the destitute corners of the country, Branch Rickey was not ready to tap one great source of talent: black America. Baseball had remained white since the late nineteenth century, when Albert Spalding and Cap Anson contrived to keep blacks out; it preached about being the national pastime and received special dispensation from Congress and the courts, yet it remained segregated nearly halfway into the next century.
Black players got the message, and formed teams of their own. In 1885, in Babylon, Long Island, New York, a headwaiter at the Argyle Hotel named Frank Thompson organized a team of waiters, called the Cuban Giants. In order to get white fans to ignore their dark skins, the players pretended to speak Spanish, correctly assuming that hardly anybody in the United States could tell they were actually speaking gibberish. The novelty helped the waiters become full-time touring players, with white owners backing them up. Sometimes the players livened up their games with comedy routines—jokes, songs, snappy games of catch with exaggerated motions, maybe a pitcher telling his fielders to sit down while he handled the batter by himself. With their flair for show business, the Cuban Giants were the forerunners of other black teams that felt the need to entertain, like the Harlem Globetrotters of basketball. Just like black actors or singers or even public figures of the day, they had to seem simple, innocent, and harmless.
Blacks also played the game straight. In 1887, the National Colored Base Ball League, the first attempt at a professional Negro League, was formed. Rebuffed by white America, blacks formed touring teams that played in ramshackle stadiums in black neighborhoods, or sometimes in rented big-league stadiums, producing players now recognized as the equal of the greatest white players, including Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, and Satchel Paige.
Sometimes players slipped through to the major leagues, oftenCuban players ostensibly of Spanish heritage. The darker the skin, the louder the insults. A few players of mixed race undoubtedly managed to pass as white or Native American. In my home I have a coffee-table book containing photographs of various major league players from the past ten decades. In the section from the 1920s, a rather inconspicuous player from a border state has noticeably mixed features. My guess is that this player had passed the color scrutiny and was able to earn a major league salary for a few years—and more power to him.
Generally, it was not easy for a player to get past the vigilant race detectors. John J. McGraw, in his last year with Baltimore in 1901, tried to hire Charlie Grant, a bellhop at the Orioles' spring training base in Arkansas, to play the infield, as long as Grant would maintain the fiction that he was of Cherokee ancestry. After Charles Comiskey threatened to sign a “Chinaman” for his White Sox, the furor ended McGraw's plans. Charlie Grant remained a bellhop until the day he died.
Rumors persisted that Babe Ruth was part black, based partially on his athletic skills and partially on his
As a young reporter in 1964, I got a glimpse of Rickey on the night the Cardinals surged into first place during a fantastic pennant race. We were in Keane's tiny office when a hidden door suddenly opened and beetle-browed, three-piece-suited Branch Rickey materialized, like Banquo's Ghost.
“Johnny Keane, you're a gosh-dang good manager!” Rickey thundered at the man he had been undermining for months. Then Rickey was gone. Keane won the World Series—and immediately quit the Cardinals to join the Yankees.
A year later, Rickey collapsed at a banquet in his honor, and he died soon afterward, just short of eighty-four. In essence, baseball's great teacher went out talking.
IX
THE NEGRO LEAGUES
W hile seeking talent for the Cardinals in the destitute corners of the country, Branch Rickey was not ready to tap one great source of talent: black America. Baseball had remained white since the late nineteenth century, when Albert Spalding and Cap Anson contrived to keep blacks out; it preached about being the national pastime and received special dispensation from Congress and the courts, yet it remained segregated nearly halfway into the next century.
Black players got the message, and formed teams of their own. In 1885, in Babylon, Long Island, New York, a headwaiter at the Argyle Hotel named Frank Thompson organized a team of waiters, called the Cuban Giants. In order to get white fans to ignore their dark skins, the players pretended to speak Spanish, correctly assuming that hardly anybody in the United States could tell they were actually speaking gibberish. The novelty helped the waiters become full-time touring players, with white owners backing them up. Sometimes the players livened up their games with comedy routines—jokes, songs, snappy games of catch with exaggerated motions, maybe a pitcher telling his fielders to sit down while he handled the batter by himself. With their flair for show business, the Cuban Giants were the forerunners of other black teams that felt the need to entertain, like the Harlem Globetrotters of basketball. Just like black actors or singers or even public figures of the day, they had to seem simple, innocent, and harmless.
Blacks also played the game straight. In 1887, the National Colored Base Ball League, the first attempt at a professional Negro League, was formed. Rebuffed by white America, blacks formed touring teams that played in ramshackle stadiums in black neighborhoods, or sometimes in rented big-league stadiums, producing players now recognized as the equal of the greatest white players, including Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, and Satchel Paige.
Sometimes players slipped through to the major leagues, oftenCuban players ostensibly of Spanish heritage. The darker the skin, the louder the insults. A few players of mixed race undoubtedly managed to pass as white or Native American. In my home I have a coffee-table book containing photographs of various major league players from the past ten decades. In the section from the 1920s, a rather inconspicuous player from a border state has noticeably mixed features. My guess is that this player had passed the color scrutiny and was able to earn a major league salary for a few years—and more power to him.
Generally, it was not easy for a player to get past the vigilant race detectors. John J. McGraw, in his last year with Baltimore in 1901, tried to hire Charlie Grant, a bellhop at the Orioles' spring training base in Arkansas, to play the infield, as long as Grant would maintain the fiction that he was of Cherokee ancestry. After Charles Comiskey threatened to sign a “Chinaman” for his White Sox, the furor ended McGraw's plans. Charlie Grant remained a bellhop until the day he died.
Rumors persisted that Babe Ruth was part black, based partially on his athletic skills and partially on his
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