Table 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 Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa 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, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. http://us.penguingroup.com 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