▪️1) “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” — Jackie Robinson ▪️2) “[Jackie] knew he had to do well. He knew that the future of blacks in baseball depended on it. The pressure was enormous, overwhelming, and unbearable at times. I…
VINTAGE BASEBALL MEMORABILIA Vintage Baseball Memorabilia Branch Rickey Positions: Catcher, Leftfielder and First BasemanBats: Left • Throws: Right5-9, 175lb (175cm, 79kg)Born: December 20, 1881 in Flat, OHDied: December 9, 1965 in Columbia, MOBuried: Rushtown Cemetery, Rushtown, OHSchool: Ohio Wesleyan University (Delaware, OH)Debut: June 16, 1905 (2,726th in major league history)vs. PHA 3 AB, 0 H, 0 HR, 0 RBI, 0 SBLast Game: August 25, 1914vs. PHA 1 AB, 0 H, 0 HR, 0 RBI, 0 SBHall…
October 16, 1949 Brooklyn does not renew Branch Rickey’s contract as president of the Dodgers. The ‘Mahatma’ will join the Pirates as the team’s executive vice president and general manager, with his son, Branch Jr., assuming the post of Pittsburgh’s vice president and farm system director.
On September 3, 2000, former major league player and scout Clyde Sukeforth dies at the age of 98. Sukeforth gained fame for endorsing Brooklyn Dodger president Branch Rickey’s decision to sign Jackie Robinson to a contract in 1945.
On January 29, 1967, former Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey and Pittsburgh Pirates hitting great Lloyd Waner are elected to the Hall of Fame. In 1947 in a unanimous vote of the Special Veterans Committee, Rickey promoted Jackie Robinson to the major leagues, effectively breaking baseball’s color line.
While giving a speech in Columbia, MO, Branch Rickey collapses and dies a few days short of his 84th birthday. Player, manager, an extraordinary judge of baseball talent, and a shrewd trader, he became perhaps the game’s most influential executive.
At the beginning of his induction speech at the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, Branch Rickey mumbles to the audience before collapsing over the podium, “I don’t believe I’m going to be able to speak any longer.” The 83 year-old baseball executive, who suffered a massive heart attack on stage, will remain unconscious while in intensive care at Boone County Memorial Hospital in Columbia, Missouri before dying three weeks later.
Branch Rickey and his group abandon the creation of the Continental League
Long-time baseball executive Branch Rickey is named president of the newly-formed Continental League. The 77-year old former Dodger general manager is currently serving as an advisor with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
1957 – In today’s issue of The Sporting News, former Pittsburgh Pirates GM – and current Pirate batting instructor (at least while George Sisler recuperates from a recent operation), Branch Rickey, – raves about Roberto Clemente, who will be seen as Rickey’s most illustrious Pirate hire. The article features a classic example of bandwagon-jumping, coming in the wake of Clemente’s dramatically improved sophomore showing, as Rickey radically revises his initial, considerably more pessimistic prognosis made in January but which won’t be made public until years later. Moreover, he shamelessly inflates his own role in acquiring Clemente, in effect stealing the credit from his longtime subordinate, pitching coach Clyde Sukeforth, the man who actually discovered Clemente last year while on assignment from Rickey to scout demoted Dodger hurler Joe Black. Ironically, just as Rickey has jumped on the bandwagon, Clemente, thanks to an off-season back injury which has somehow escaped the “Mahatma”‘s omniscient eye, is about to embark on the worst season of his career.
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