Wesley Branch Rickey (December 20, 1881 – December 9, 1965) was an American professional baseball catcher, manager, sports executive, and team owner.
He was instrumental in breaking the baseball color line by signing black player Jackie Robinson. He also created the framework for the modern minor league farm system, encouraged the major leagues to add new teams through his involvement in the proposed Continental League, introduced the batting helmet, and created the standard 20-80 scouting scale. He was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967.
Early life
Rickey was born in Stockdale,Ohio, the son of Jacob Frank Rickey and Emily (née Brown).
Rickey was the uncle of Beth Rickey, a Louisiana political activist.
Rickey attended the University of Michigan, where he received his LL.B.
While at Michigan, Rickey applied for the job as Michigan's baseball coach.
Rickey asked every alumnus he had ever met to write letters to Philip Bartelme, the school's athletic director, on his behalf.
Bartelme recalled, "Day after day those letters came in." Bartelme was reportedly impressed with Rickey's passion for baseball and his idealism about the proper role of athletics on a college campus. Bartelme convinced the dean of the law school that Rickey could handle his law studies while serving as the school's baseball coach. Bartelme reportedly called Rickey into his office to tell him he had the job if only "to put a stop to those damn letters that come in every day." In his final season, the Michigan squad — led by brilliant sophomore first baseman and left-handed pitcher, future Hall of Famer George Sisler, who batted .445 — compiled a 21–4–1 won-lost record, a winning percentage of .827.
Playing career
Before his front office days, Rickey played both football and baseball professionally.
Professional football career
In 1902, Rickey played professional football for the Shelby Blues of the "Ohio League", the direct predecessor to the modern National Football League (NFL.) Rickey often played for pay with Shelby while he was attending Ohio Wesleyan.
During his time with Shelby, Rickey became friends with his teammate Charles Follis, who was the first black professional football player.
He also played against him on October 17, 1903, when Follis ran for a 70-yard touchdown against the Ohio Wesleyan football team.
After that game Rickey praised Follis, calling him "a wonder." It is also possible that Follis' poise and class under the pressures of such racial tension, as well as his exceptional play in spite of it, inspired Rickey to sign Jackie Robinson decades later. Rickey, however, stated his inspiration for bringing Jackie Robinson into baseball was the ill-treatment he saw received by his black catcher Charles Thomas on the Ohio Wesleyan baseball team coached by Rickey in 1903 and 1904 and the gentlemanly way Thomas handled it.
When Rickey signed Robinson, Charles Thomas' story was made known in the papers.
Professional baseball career
Minor leagues
In 1903, Rickey signed a contract with the Terre Haute Hottentots of the Class B Central League, making his professional debut on June 20. He was assigned to the Le Mars Blackbirds of the Class D Iowa–South Dakota League.
During this period, he also spent two seasons–1904 and 1905—coaching baseball, basketball and football at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, where he also served as athletic director and as an instructor of Shakespeare, English, and freshman history.
Major leagues
St. Louis Browns (1905–1906)
thumb|Rickey batting for the [[St. Louis Browns in 1906]]
A left-handed-batting catcher, Rickey debuted in the major leagues with the St. Louis Browns in 1905.
The Browns, in the midst of one of several low points during their 52-year history, were 52–90 and in last place at the time.
Rickey steered them to a 5–6–1 record over the last 12 games of the season.
Then, in , they improved by 14 games, jumping from eighth to fifth place in the American League.
However, the Browns took a giant step backwards; despite the June signing of the player who would become one of the greatest in franchise history—future Hall of Famer George Sisler—they went only 63–91, 8½ games worse than in 1914 edition.
Still, Rickey maintained Hedges' confidence.
But during the 1915–1916 offseason, as part of Major League Baseball's settlement of the Federal League "war", Hedges sold the Browns to the former operator of the Federal League's St. Louis Terriers, Philip DeCatesby Ball.
Ball brought along his own manager, Fielder Jones, and restricted an unhappy Rickey to front-office duties.
Compounding matters, the pair's personalities clashed, and as the 1916 season concluded, Rickey began looking for a new job.
St. Louis Cardinals (1917–1942)
Early years and World War I service (1917–1918)
At the same time, Rickey was struggling with ownership change and on-field failings with the American League St. Louis Browns, the National League's St. Louis Cardinals were also enduring a period of turmoil with both.
In 1916, they had finished eighth and last in the NL and attracted a league-worst 224,308 fans to Robison Field, and their owner, Helene Hathaway Britton, put them up for sale.
A local consortium of businessmen, including automobile dealer Sam Breadon, quickly formed to buy the financially strapped team and keep it from moving elsewhere.
Searching for a chief executive, they reached out to seven St. Louis sportswriters and asked for recommendations; all seven separately suggested Rickey.
Before Rickey could join the Cardinals, he had to sort out his existing obligations to Ball and the Browns.
American League president and founder Ban Johnson, determined to keep Rickey in his league, pressured Ball to seek a temporary injunction to enforce the terms of Rickey's contract. The dispute was resolved in April 1917, and Rickey became the Cardinals' club president, business manager, and a minority owner.
Apart from his year as president of the Continental League in 1959–1960, Rickey spent the remainder of his baseball career in the National League.
Each of Rickey's first two seasons with the Cardinals was overshadowed by the United States' entry into World War I, on April 6, 1917.
Despite the team's last-place standing in 1916, Rickey inherited two Hall-of-Fame quality assets: 21-year-old infielder Rogers Hornsby and the Cardinals' manager, Miller Huggins.
Each contributed to a strong bounce-back season in 1917: Hornsby batted .327 in 145 games and led the team in hits, and Huggins guided the squad to 82 wins and a third-place finish.
During the 1920s, Hornsby became the cornerstone of a National League pennant contender and 1926 World Series champion.
But Huggins, who had been a member of a rival ownership group that lost its bid for the Cardinals to Breadon's syndicate, left to manage the New York Yankees at season's end; there he led an eventual American League and MLB powerhouse to six pennants and three world championships before dying at 51 during the 1929 season.
The war-disrupted 1918 campaign saw the Cardinals, managed by veteran minor-league pilot Jack Hendricks, perform poorly.
They plummeted to last place in the National League, winning only 51 of 131 games during the shortened regular season, which ended September 2.
But by that point Rickey had enlisted as an officer in the United States Army.
His absence from the team began August 31, 1918.
He embarked by steamship for France and the Western Front in mid-September.
Recovering from a bout of pneumonia contracted aboard ship, Rickey commanded a training unit of the Chemical Warfare Service that included Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson. His unit saw action as part of the First Gas Regiment. Six weeks after arriving, the November 11, 1918, armistice ended hostilities, and Rickey returned to the U.S. on December 23. He succeeded Hendricks as the Cardinals' field manager for 1919.
Field manager (1919–1925)
Rickey's record as manager of the Cardinals from 1919 through the first 38 games of 1925 was a relatively mediocre (458–485–4, .486).
The team improved from 53 victories in 1919 to 75 in 1920, peaked at 87-66 in 1921, saw two more winning seasons in 1922 and 1923, then fell off to losing in 1924, and losing worse in 1925.
Already in 1920, the ownership of the team had stabilized when Sam Breadon purchased controlling interest
thumb|upright|Future Hall of Famer [[Albert Pujols showing Rickey's famous Redbirds logo in 2008]]
On the big league squad, future Hall of Famer Jim Bottomley took over at first base in just his second season, batting .371 with 194 hits.
Twenty-year-old Ohio Wesleyan graduate Howard Freigau started 81 games at shortstop, and outfielders Ray Blades and Heinie Mueller became key contributors.
The rosters of Rickey's farm teams in 1923 included another future Hall of Famer, Chick Hafey, as well as future 1920s Cardinal standouts Les Bell, Taylor Douthit, Fred Frankhouse, and Wattie Holm.
Along with improving player development, Rickey improved the Cardinals' appearance on the field.
The team's distinctive logo of two brilliant red cardinals perched on a baseball bat first appeared in the 1922 season.
Rickey had noticed a similar arrangement on a sign at a Presbyterian church in Ferguson, Missouri, he was speaking at.
It had been designed by Allie May Schmidt, whose father was a graphic designer.
St. Louis jerseys bear the perched redbirds over the name "Cardinals", with the letter "C" of the word hooked over the bat.
In 1923, Rickey experimented with placing uniform numbers on jersey sleeves to help fans identify players.
The practice was abandoned after only one season, and it was another decade until big-league teams put larger numbers on the backs of uniform shirts.
Business/general manager (1925–1942)
When the Cardinals' 1925 season started 13-25, Breadon fired Rickey as manager of the last-place club on May 30, already 13 games out of the lead. Rogers Hornsby took over as player–manager.
The 43 year-old Rickey had already been a player, manager, executive, and minority owner in the Major Leagues; still, there was little indication true greatness in the sport still lay ahead.
In spite of the firing Breadon could not deny Rickey's acumen for player development, and asked him to stay to run the front office.
An embittered Rickey wailed, "You can't do this to me, Sam.
You are ruining me." "No," Breadon replied, "I am doing you the greatest favor one man has ever done to another."
Meanwhile, in 1926, Hornsby's first full year as manager, the new skipper led the Cardinals to their first World Series championship.
Development of the farm system
thumb|upright|Farm product [[Stan Musial went to become a 20-time big league All-Star, 3-time NL MVP, and iconic baseball Hall of Famer.
Pictured in 1953.]]
Two more pennants followed in and , followed by World Series losses.
By , the Cardinals were the class of the National League.
They won 101 games in 1931 and won the World Series in seven games over the defending champion, the powerhouse Foxx-Simmons-Grove Philadelphia Athletics.
The star of the 1931 World Series was rookie Pepper Martin, a 1928 graduate of Rickey's player development system.
With eight owned or affiliated farm teams by 1931, the system was fed by the Cardinals' scouting corps, headed by Charley Barrett, who introduced tryout camps to keep the pipeline filled with young amateur talent from across the U.S.
Soon, other organization graduates joined the team, among them future Hall of Famers Dizzy Dean and Joe "Ducky" Medwick, and Dean's brother Paul "Daffy" Dean.
All three were integral parts of the 1934 Cardinals' "Gashouse Gang", who won the franchise's third World Series title. Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was concerned that Rickey's minor league system, which both concentrated talent and constantly promoted a team's best players to the next league up, was going to ruin baseball by destroying minor-league teams; he twice released over 70 Cardinal minor leaguers.
But despite Landis's efforts, Rickey's minor-league system thrived; every major league adopted a similar systems within a few years.
Arguably, the farm system saved the minor leagues, by keeping them a necessary part of baseball during the television age, when fans anywhere could watch big-league games at home or a bar.
Minor-league attendance declined, but the bottom never fell out.
Rickey continued to develop the Cardinals into the early 1940s, with his final team in St. Louis having the best season in franchise history, winning 106 games and the 1942 World Series.
The 1942 Cardinals were led by a new crop of home grown players, including two future Hall of Famers, Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial; and several others, including future NL MVP Marty Marion, were among the best at their position during their eras.
Even their manager Billy Southworth was a product of their farm system.
Brooklyn Dodgers (1943–1950)
In spite of St. Louis's World Series championship success in 1942, bigger opportunities within baseball beckoned to Rickey.
When his good friend Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Larry MacPhail enlisted in the army to serve in World War II, the Dodgers hired Rickey to replace him as president and general manager, ending a tenure of over two decades with the Cardinals.
In 1945, the Dodger ownership reorganized, with Rickey acquiring 25% of Dodger stock to become an equal partner with three other owners.
Further innovations
Rickey continued to innovate in his time with Brooklyn.
He was responsible for the first full-time spring training facility, in Vero Beach, Florida, and encouraged the use of now commonplace tools such as the batting cage, pitching machines, and batting helmets.
He also pioneered the use of statistical inference in baseball (now called sabermetrics), when he hired statistician Allan Roth as a full-time analyst for the Dodgers in 1947.
After viewing Roth's evidence, Rickey promoted the idea that on-base percentage was a more important hitting statistic than batting average. While working under Rickey, Roth was also the first person to provide statistical evidence that platoon effects were real and quantifiable.
Breaking the color barrier
Rickey's most memorable act with the Dodgers was signing Jackie Robinson, thus breaking baseball's color barrier, which had been an unwritten rule since the 1880s.
This policy had continued under a succession of baseball leaders, including Landis, who openly opposed integrating Major League Baseball.
Landis died in 1944, but Rickey had already set the process in motion, having sought (and gained) the Dodgers Board of Directors' approval in 1943 to begin the search for "the right man". Around this time, Rickey held tryouts of black players, saying he was forming a new USL team, the "Brooklyn Brown Dodgers".
In fact, the Dodgers were looking for the right man to break the color line.
On August 28, 1945, Rickey signed Robinson, who never played in the USL, to a minor-league contract.
Robinson had been playing in the Negro leagues for the Kansas City Monarchs.
On October 23, 1945, it was announced that Robinson would join the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers' International League affiliate, for the 1946 season.
He became the league batting champion and led the Royals to a dominant league championship. He made clear in their first meeting that he anticipated widespread resistance both inside and outside baseball to opening its doors to black players.
As he predicted, right from the start Robinson faced obstacles among his teammates and other players.
No matter how harsh white people were to Robinson, he could not retaliate.
Robinson had agreed with Rickey not to lose his temper and jeopardize the chances of all the blacks who would follow him if he could help break down the barrier.
In Ken Burns's documentary Baseball, Red Barber says that Rickey's determination to desegregate Major League Baseball was born of a combination of idealism and astute business sense.
The idealism was at least partially rooted in an incident involving a team for which Rickey had worked.
While managing at Ohio Wesleyan University, a black player, Charles Thomas, was extremely upset at being refused accommodation because of his race at the hotel where the team stayed.
Infuriated, Rickey got him into the hotel for the night, but never forgot the incident and later said, "I may not be able to do something about racism in every field, but I can sure do something about it in baseball." The business element was based on the fact that the Negro leagues had numerous star athletes and the first Major League team to hire them would get the first pick of the players at an attractive price.
At the time, Mexican brewery czar Jorge Pasquel was raiding America for black talent (e.g. Satchel Paige), as well as disgruntled white players, for the Mexican League, with the idea to create an integrated league that could compete with the U.S. major leagues.
However idealistic he was, Rickey did not compensate Monarchs ownership for the rights to obtain Robinson, nor did he pay for rights to Don Newcombe, who also joined the Dodgers from a Negro leagues club.
Rickey also tried to sign Monte Irvin, but Newark Eagles business owner Effa Manley refused to allow Irvin to leave her club without compensation.
When she threatened to sue him, Rickey stopped pursuing Irvin, who later signed with the New York Giants.
Later career with Dodgers
From 1945 to 1950, Rickey was one of four owners of the Dodgers, each with one quarter of the franchise.
When one of the four (John L. Smith) died, Walter O'Malley took control of that quarter.
Also in 1950, Rickey's contract as Dodger president expired, and O'Malley decided that were Rickey to retain the job, almost all of Rickey's power would be gone; for example, he would no longer take a percentage of every franchise sale.
Rickey declined a new contract as president.
Then, to be a majority owner, O'Malley offered to buy Rickey's portion.
Seeing no reason to hold on to the club, Rickey agreed.
In a final retaliation against O'Malley, Rickey instead offered the club percentage to a friend for $1 million.
His chances at complete franchise control at risk, O'Malley was forced to offer more money, and Rickey finally sold his portion for $1.05 million (about $ in dollars). Bringing several key aides with him from Brooklyn, Rickey began a teardown/rebuilding process that consumed his five-year term as general manager.
The Pirates finished eighth (and last) four times and seventh once, compiled a 269–501 (.349) won–lost record, and in 1952 finished 42–112, lagging behind the champion Dodgers by 54<small></small> games.
It was the second-worst season in franchise history and the fourth-worst in modern (post-1900) baseball history.
After presiding over one last-place season with the Pirates, Rickey proposed cutting the pay of power-hitting superstar Ralph Kiner.
When Kiner objected, Rickey famously quipped, "Son, we could have finished last without you!"
thumb|left|Rickey speaks with young shortstop [[Dick Groat in 1955, his final year as general manager of the Pirates]]
Perhaps Rickey's most notable innovation during his Pittsburgh tenure was in , when the Pirates became the first team to permanently adopt batting helmets on both offense and defense.
These helmets resembled a primitive fiberglass "miner's cap".
This was the mandate of Rickey, who also owned stock in the company producing the helmets.
Under his orders, all Pirate players had to wear the helmets both at bat and in the field.
But within a few weeks, the team began to abandon the helmets on defense, partly because of their weight.
Once the Pirates discarded the helmets on defense, the trend disappeared from the game.
Health problems forced Rickey to retire in 1955. The Pirates were still mired in the NL basement and did not have another winning record until 1958.
But with an average age of 25.5, they were the youngest outfit in the Senior Circuit in 1955.
Rickey's contributions helped lead to a World Series championship for Pittsburgh in 1960.
In 2000, author Andrew O'Toole wrote, "The core of the 1960 championship team [notably Roberto Clemente, Dick Groat, Bill Mazeroski, Elroy Face, and Vern Law] was put together and nurtured by Rickey."
Rickey fast-tracked youngsters like Law and Bob Friend, signed by his predecessor, Roy Hamey, to the majors.
He recruited Groat from Duke University and drafted Face and Clemente from Brooklyn's minor-league system.
His scouts and minor-league instructors found Mazeroski and developed him for MLB delivery in 1956.
Pittsburgh's farm and scouting system remained highly productive into the 1970s, especially in developing Latin American players signed by scout Howie Haak, one of the people Rickey had brought to the Pirates from the Dodgers.
Rickey remained on the Pirate masthead as chairman of the board for almost four full seasons after Joe L. Brown succeeded him as general manager in October .
He also held a small amount of stock in the club.
But that association ended in August 1959, when, nearing his 78th birthday, Rickey took on another challenge as the chief executive of a proposed third major league, the Continental League.
Three weeks after the formation of the new circuit was announced, on August 18, 1959, Rickey sold his stake in the Pirates, resigned as board chairman, and signed a 16-month contract to become the first president of the new league at a reported $50,000 annual salary (equivalent to approximately $ in ). He immediately led a delegation of Continental League owners to a summit meeting in a Manhattan hotel with Commissioner of Baseball Ford Frick, the presidents of the National and American leagues, and a subcommittee of MLB club owners. The established leagues were wary of a new challenge to baseball's antitrust law exemption, when the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Emanuel Celler, a Brooklyn Democrat enraged by his borough's loss of the Dodgers, introduced legislation that would place baseball under antitrust law. This concern led Frick and his entourage to publicly treat the Continental League with respect; at the meeting, Frick asked Rickey and the other league presidents (Warren Giles and Joe Cronin) to form a committee that would set up ground rules to govern the admission of the Continental to eventual equal status with the two major leagues. he went into temporary retirement. The year also saw Rickey endure tragedy and hardship on a personal level. On April 10, 1961, his son, Branch Jr., farm system director of the Pirates, died from complications of diabetes at the age of 47. Then, on June 27, Rickey suffered a "serious" heart attack—his second cardiac event since 1958—while staying at his summer home on Canada's Manitoulin Island and was airlifted to a Sudbury, Ontario, hospital for treatment. Upon his recovery, Rickey and his wife, Jane, decided to move from suburban Pittsburgh back to St. Louis in 1962, where, on October 29, Rickey returned to the Cardinals exactly 20 years to the day he left to become general consultant on the development of Cardinal players and special advisor to owner August A. Busch Jr.
But Rickey's second stint with the Cardinals was marred by controversy. He recommended that Cardinal icon Stan Musial be compelled to retire, even after the eventual Hall of Famer's stellar season, in which Musial, 41, had finished third in the National League batting race (hitting .330 in 135 games played), and broken Honus Wagner's NL record for career hits. Rickey wrote to Busch: "He can't run, he can't field, and he can't throw. Twenty-five Musials would finish in last place." Musial would play one more campaign before retiring from the field in September 1963.
Rickey also undermined St. Louis general manager Bing Devine, who had begun his baseball career under Rickey in the late 1930s as an office boy. He was a vocal critic of one of Devine's highest profile (and most successful) trades, when he acquired veteran shortstop Groat from Pittsburgh after the 1962 season. Rickey believed that Groat, 32 at the time, was too old. Groat, however, still had two prime years left. He batted .319 () and .292 (), and was runner-up in the National League's 1963 Most Valuable Player Award balloting. He was the NL's starting shortstop in both the 1963 and 1964 All-Star games, and helped lead the 1963 Cardinals to a second-place finish. But the 1964 team fell behind in the standings and seemed stalled in fifth place in mid-August. When Busch fired Devine on August 17 and replaced him with Rickey protégé Bob Howsam, the 82-year-old consultant and special advisor was cast as the cause of Devine's downfall. The controversial firing embarrassed Busch when the team Devine assembled caught fire in the season's final six weeks, won the National League pennant, and triumphed in the 1964 World Series. After the season, Busch terminated Rickey's contract, ending a professional baseball career that had spanned 62 years.
Personal life
thumb|Rickey in 1912
Rickey was a Freemason, first at Lucasville Lodge #465 in Ohio, then at Tuscan Lodge #360 in St. Louis. After arriving in Brooklyn, Rickey joined Montauk Masonic Lodge #286 in Brooklyn.
Stricken with tuberculosis, he sought treatment in Saranac Lake, New York in 1908 and 1909 at the Trudeau Sanatorium. Later, he moved into the Jacob Schiff cottage.
Death
A public speaker in his later years, on November 13, 1965, Rickey collapsed in the middle of a speech in Columbia, Missouri, as he was being elected to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. He had told a story of physical courage and was about to relate an illustration from the Bible. "Now I'm going to tell you a story from the Bible about spiritual courage," he said. Rickey murmured he could not continue, collapsed and never spoke again. He faltered, fell back into his seat and slipped onto the floor. He never regained consciousness. His brain was damaged when his breathing stopped momentarily, though his heart picked up its rhythm again. Through the next 26 days, hospitalized in a coma, there was little change.
Honors and legacy
According to historian Harold Seymour:
:Branch Rickey stands forth as professional baseball's counterpart of that oldest stereotype of American folklore, the shrewd hard-working, God-fearing Yankee trader. He was also one of baseball's genuine innovators, an administrator who made a lasting imprint upon the industry....[His] seeming contradictions between profession and practice, together with this skill and oratorical obfuscation and circumlocution, caused many to regard Rickey as a hypocritical mountebank. Yet even his detractors acknowledged Rickey's industriousness, organizing genius, an unsurpassed ability to judge the potential of raw recruits.... Rickey built the Cardinals into a baseball empire that, at its peak, comprised 32 clubs, 600 or 700 players, and an investment of more than $2 million.
In addition to Rickey's election to the Baseball Hall of Fame as a contributor in 1967, in 1997 he was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, in 2009 he was elected to the College Baseball Hall of Fame.
In January 2014, the Cardinals announced Rickey among 22 former players and personnel to be inducted into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum for the inaugural class of 2014.
A ballpark in Portsmouth, Ohio, once used by the Portsmouth Explorers, a charter member of the Frontier League before the club folded in 1996, is named in Rickey's honor. The Branch Rickey Arena at Ohio Wesleyan University is also named in his honor.
A section of US Highway 23 in Ohio, running north from the Franklin County border to the city of Delaware, has been named the Branch Rickey Memorial Highway.
In 1992, Rotary International of Denver, Colorado, created the Branch Rickey Award, which is given annually to a Major League Baseball player in recognition of exceptional community service. Outside of Coors Field in Denver is a monument to Rickey by the sculptor George Lundeen, dedicated in 2005, with this simple inscription:
Another quotation attributed to Rickey is:
Members of his family also became involved in baseball. Son Branch Jr. was an executive with the Dodgers and Pirates for over two decades prior to his 1961 death, and grandson Branch Rickey III served as a farm system director with the Pirates and Cincinnati Reds and president of the Triple-A American Association and Pacific Coast League during a 57-year baseball career. His brother Frank Wanzer Rickey (1888–1953) scouted for the Cardinals and Dodgers; his signees included Hall of Famers Slaughter and Johnny Mize. Frank Rickey's son-in-law, Charles A. Hurth (1906–1969), was a longtime minor league executive who served as president of the Double-A Southern Association and, from mid-April 1960 through mid-November 1961, as the first general manager of the Mets, including the period when Branch Rickey and the team were discussing a top role for Rickey in the New York front office.
Moreover, Rickey's influence continued to loom large after his passing, especially in the National League. One year after his 1965 death, five of the league's ten general managers—Howsam (Cardinals), Devine (Mets), Brown (Pirates), Buzzie Bavasi (Dodgers) and Bill DeWitt (Reds), as well as NL president Giles—had at one time worked under Rickey during his long executive career.
thumb|Lobby card for The Jackie Robinson Story, 1950. [[Minor Watson (left) portrays Rickey and Jackie Robinson portrays himself]]
Portrayals on stage, film and television
Due to his connection with Jackie Robinson, Rickey has been portrayed numerous times on screen and stage:
- In the 1950 movie The Jackie Robinson Story, he is portrayed by Minor Watson.
- In the 1996 HBO movie Soul of the Game, Rickey is played by Edward Herrmann.
- In the 2013 film 42, Rickey is played by Harrison Ford. Rickey's great-granddaughter, actress Kelley Jakle, also appears in the film.
- Rickey is the title character in the 1989 Edward Schmidt play Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting, a fictionalized version of the meeting in which Rickey offered Jackie Robinson a major-league contract.
Additionally, he was also featured heavily in the 2016 PBS documentary, Jackie Robinson, which was directed by Ken Burns.
Baseball records
Managerial record
{| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 95%; text-align:center;"
|-
! rowspan="2"|Team !! rowspan="2"|Year !! colspan="5"|Regular season !! colspan="4"|Postseason
|-
!Games!!Won!!Lost!!Win %!!Finish!! Won !! Lost !! Win % !! Result
|-
|-
!SLB||
||11|||| 8th in AL || – || – || – || –
|-
!SLB||
||153|||| 5th in AL || – || – || – || –
|-
!SLB||
||154|||| 6th in AL || – || – || – || –
|-
! colspan="2"|SLB total || 318 || || || 0 || 0 || – ||
|-
!STL||
||137|||| 7th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 5th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||153|||| 3rd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 3rd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||153|||| 5th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 6th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||38|||| fired || – || – || – || –
|-
! colspan="2"|STL total || 943 || || || 0 || 0 || – ||
|-
! colspan="2"|Total || 1,261 || || || 0 || 0 || – ||
|}
Record as general manager
{| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 95%; text-align:center;"
|-
! rowspan="2"|Team !! rowspan="2"|Year !! colspan="5"|Regular season !! colspan="4"|Postseason
|-
!Games!!Won!!Lost!!Win %!!Finish!! Won !! Lost !! Win % !! Result
|-
!SLB||
||153|||| 8th in AL || – || – || – || –
|-
!SLB||
||153|||| 5th in AL || – || – || – || –
|-
!SLB||
||154|||| 6th in AL || – || – || – || –
|-
!SLB||
||154|||| 5th in AL || – || – || – || –
|-
! colspan="2"|SLB total || 614 || || || 0 || 0 || – ||
|-
!STL||
||152||||3rd in NL||–||–||–||–
|-
!STL||
||127||||resigned||–||–||–||–
|-
!colspan="11"|
|-
|-
!STL||
||137|||| 7th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 5th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||153|||| 3rd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 3rd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||153|||| 5th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 6th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||153|||| 4th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-style="background:#FDE910"
!STL||
||154|||| 1st in NL || || Won World Series (NYY)
|-
!STL||
||153||||2nd in NL||–||–||–||–
|-style="background:#fdd"
!STL||
||154|||| 1st in NL || || Lost World Series (NYY)
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 4th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-style="background:#fdd"
!STL||
||154|||| 1st in NL || || Lost World Series (PHA)
|-style="background:#fde910"
!STL||
||154|||| 1st in NL || || Won World Series (PHA)
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 6th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 5th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-style="background:#fde910"
!STL||
||154|||| 1st in NL || || Won World Series (DET)
|-
!STL||
||154|||| 2nd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL ||
||155|||| 2nd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL ||
||157|||| 4th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL ||
||156|||| 6th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL ||
||155||||2nd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL ||
||156||||3rd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!STL ||
||155||||2nd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-style="background:#fde910"
!STL ||
||156|||| 1st in NL || || Won World Series (NYY)
|-
! colspan="2"|STL total || 3,966||||||||
|-
!BKN ||
||153|| || 3rd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!BKN ||
||155|| || 7th in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!BKN ||
||155|| || 3rd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!BKN ||
||157|| || 2nd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-style="background:#fdd"
!BKN ||
||154|| || 1st in NL || || Lost World Series (NYY)
|-
!BKN ||
||154|| || 3rd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-style="background:#fdd"
!BKN ||
||154|| || 1st in NL || ||Lost World Series (NYY)
|-
!BKN ||
||154|| || 2nd in NL || – || – || – || –
|-
!colspan="2"|BKN total||1,236||||||||
|-
!PIT ||
||154||||7th in NL || –||–||–||–
|-
!PIT ||
||154||||8th in NL || –||–||–||–
|-
!PIT ||
||154||||8th in NL || –||–||–||–
|-
!PIT ||
||154||||8th in NL || –||–||–||–
|-
!PIT ||
||154||||8th in NL || –||–||–||–
|-
!colspan="2"|PIT total||770||||||–||–||–||–
|-
!colspan="2"|Total||6,586||||||||
|}
Head coaching record
College football
See also
- List of Major League Baseball player–managers
- List of St. Louis Cardinals owners and executives
- List of Los Angeles Dodgers owners and executives
- List of Pittsburgh Pirates owners and executives
References
Further reading
External links
<!-- lived there for a time -->