Table Of ContentTable of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE
Bibliography
PUBLISHED TITLES IN THE PENGUIN LIVES
SERIES
Karen Armstrong on the Buddha
Larry McMurtry on Crazy Horse
Sherwin B. Nuland on Leonardo da Vinci
Nigel Nicolson on Virginia Woolf
Jonathan Spence on Mao Zedong
Marshall Frady on Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peter Gay on Mozart · Edna O’Brien on James Joyce
Roy Blount, Jr., on Robert E. Lee
Garry Wills on Saint Augustine
Douglas Brinkley on Rosa Parks
Carol Shields on Jane Austen · Paul Johnson on Napoleon
Elizabeth Hardwick on Herman Melville
Bobbie Ann Mason on Elvis Presley
John Keegan on Winston Churchill
Thomas Cahill on Pope John XXIII · Mary Gordon on Joan of Arc
Ada Louise Huxtable on Frank Lloyd Wright
Martin Marty on Martin Luther
Thomas Keneally on Abraham Lincoln
Edmund White on Marcel Proust
Laura Shapiro on Julia Child
Louis Auchincloss on Woodrow Wilson · R. W. B. Lewis on Dante
Francine du Plessix Gray on Simone Weil
Patricia Bosworth on Marlon Brando
Wayne Koestenbaum on Andy Warhol
Jane Smiley on Charles Dickens
Robert V. Remini on Joseph Smith
Kathryn Harrison on Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Tom Wicker on George Herbert Walker Bush
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2011 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Jimmy Breslin, 2011 All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Breslin, Jimmy.
Branch Rickey / Jimmy Breslin.
p. cm.—(A penguin life)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-10147603-1
1. Rickey, Branch, 1881-1965. 2. Baseball team owners—United States—Biography.
3. Brooklyn Dodgers (Baseball team)—Presidents—Biography. I. Title.
GV865.R45B74 2010
796.357092—dc22
[B] 2010035008
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
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For Charles V. Feeney, aka Pally
PROLOGUE
Beautiful. When they ask me to write a book about a Great American, right away
I say yes. When I say yes I always mean no. They ask me to choose a subject,
and I say Branch Rickey. He placed the first black baseball player into the major
leagues. His name was Jackie Robinson. He helped clear the sidewalks for
Barack Obama to come into the White House. As it only happened once in the
whole history of the country, I would say that is pretty good. Then some editors
told me they never heard of Rickey. Which I took as an insult, a disdain for what
I know, as if it is not important enough for them to bother with.
So now I had to write the book.
Simultaneously, I had a problem for a writer as bad as sprained hands. The
rule I followed from my first day as a copyboy in the sports departments was
that you couldn’t write about a game unless you went to see it. These people
who tried reporting by watching television were killing readers with lifeless
stories. It still is like this, except there are many fewer readers to murder.
The trouble is, I spoke to Branch Rickey only once in my whole life. I am
with my friend Rusty Wilde at Ebbets Field, where maybe two hundred
spectators sit in a big rainstorm watching the Brooklyn Dodgers football team
play against the Chicago Rockets. I was a copyboy after school at the old Long
Island Press and got the tickets from the sports department. The newspaper is
gone as are both teams.
Into the seat behind me comes Rickey, the Dodgers owner, in a yellow slicker,
with lackeys to the left and right. He says, “Hello, boys.” I am on my high
school football team and must show how much I know. I ask him why his star
quarterback is playing what was known as a single wing formation. They start
each play by passing a wet ball back to him, and in all this mud you can’t handle
the ball so good.
“He ought to be in a T,” I say. “We got the best T quarterback ever to live
from around here.”
Rickey says, “Who is that?”
I say, “Sidney Luckman.”
Rickey says, “I’ve heard of him.” He was playing me for a fool. Luckman was
already a legend.
I say, “He comes out of Erasmus Hall High. At Flatbush and Church. My
