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review essay
Branch Rickey:
Baseball’s Master Paternalist
Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman, University
of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 2007, pp. xx + 683, pb,
US$34.95.
Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow in the Faculty of Law
at the University of Melbourne.
Branch Rickey will always be remembered for one
thing. In 1947, as president and general manager of the
Brooklyn Dodgers, he employed Jackie Robinson,
an African-American, ending the colour bar that had
traditionally operated in Major League Baseball (MLB).
Rickey decided on this course of action when he took
up the reins of the Dodgers in late 1942/early 1943. He
carefully orchestrated Robinson’s ‘integration’ into the
‘national pastime’, attempting to ensure that it occurred with a minimum
of fuss. He steadfastly resisted threatened actions by members of the
Dodgers playing staff and other teams who refused to play with, or against,
Robinson. For the rest of his life, Rickey was a champion of racial equality,
always prepared to deliver speeches that people should be employed on
the basis of their skills, not their colour. In a speech at Wilberforce College,
Ohio, on 17 February 1948, he said:
I believe that racial extractions and colour hues and forms of worship
become secondary to what men can do … The denial of equality of
opportunity to qualify for work to any one, anywhere, any time, is
ununderstandable to me … It is not strange that Robinson should be
Rickey was famous for his ‘use’ of language.
Review Essay
given a chance in America to feed and shelter and clothe his wife and
child and mother in a job that he can do well, better than most individuals
… It is not strange that a drop of water seeks to find the ocean.
In August 1957, President Eisenhower appointed Rickey as a member of
the Commission on Government Employment Policy. Rickey’s employment
of Robinson and the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v Board
of Education, which overturned the ‘separate but equal’ approach to public
education of the Court, in Plessy v Ferguson, in 1896, were championed by civil
rights advocates in the 1950s.
Rickey was larger than life, a force of nature, one of the great characters
of American baseball. He worked sixteen hour days and was always prepared
to deliver speeches and work on behalf of organisations and issues close to
his heart; whether it be the cause of equal rights in baseball and America
more broadly, Methodism, the Republican Party, anti-communism, the evils
of alcohol, the importance of education and supporting drives for war bonds
or donating blood during World War II.
Rickey was a great talker, who waxed lyrical on baseball and numerous
other topics. He was baseball’s first ‘intellectual’, and a major innovator; his
employment of Jackie Robinson the most famous example. In early 1943
he delivered a speech to a Rotary Club on his plans for the Dodgers. The
audience was regaled, if not overwhelmed, by his long sentences and big words.
A member of the audience said, ‘He is a man of many faucets, all running
at once’. Sportswriter Tom Meany had read a book by travel writer John
Gunther, Inside Asia, which described Indian independence leader Mahatma
Gandhi as ‘an incredible combination of Jesus Christ, Tammany Hall and
your father’. Meany thought such a moniker could equally be applied to
Quoted in Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious
Gentleman, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 2007,
p. 450.
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka 347 US 483 (1954); and Plessy v
Ferguson 163 US 537 (1896).
Other persons who might qualify for such a position could be Arthur
Goodwell Spalding, who played a major role in the emergence and
consolidation of baseball as a professional sport; and Ban Johnson, the
dominant personality in baseball in the first two decades of the twentieth
century. See Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, Oxford
University Press, New York, 1960; Harold Seymour, Baseball: The
Golden Age, Oxford University Press, New York, 1971; and Peter Levine,
A. G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball: The Promise of American Sport,
Oxford University Press, New York, 1985.
Quoted in Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 324.
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Rickey, whom he dubbed ‘The Mahatma’. Red Barber, the Dodgers’ radio
broadcaster who Rickey took into his confidence his decision to break baseball’s
colour bar, said of Rickey, ‘He didn’t talk like anybody you’d ever talked with.
He was a formidable man, a strong man, an intelligent man. And he knew it’.
Paternalistic to his very core, Rickey liked nothing better than ‘testing’ the
young men that came into his charge. He liked to challenge them, to see what
they were made of. He would ‘confront’ them with a barrage of questions,
trying to determine their values. In the process he would warn them against
the evils of the demon drink, advise them to find a nice girl, marry and settle
down, to save and look to the future. He provided many players, their families
and those who worked with him in management, with financial and other
support during their journeys down life’s highway. He was strongly admired
and respected by most of those who worked with and for him. Following his
death, in December 1965, Jackie Robinson said of Rickey that ‘He was always
doing something for someone else’.
Rickey always maintained that he liked players who displayed initiative,
who had ‘get up and go’. This was something, however, that he applied to
their performance on the baseball diamond, or the pursuit of education or
business ventures off the diamond. He did not like and had little time for
players who challenged him in negotiations concerning their wages. These
were matters for him to determine; he knew best.
Wesley Branch Rickey was born on 20 December 1881 in Stockton, Ohio.
He was called ‘Wesley’ after John Wesley, who, besides being the founder
of Methodism, was an early campaigner against slavery. His second name,
‘Branch’, according to Lowenfish, stems from a passage in the Old Testament
book of Isaiah, 11:1, which states, ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the
stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of the roots’.10 Throughout his life
he was called Branch. His son, Branch Jr, was affectionately known as ‘Twig’.
Branch Rickey displayed intellectual talents at an early age and
commenced work as a teacher when seventeen. Such employment not only
contributed to the family budget, but also held out the prospect of acquiring a
college education. He enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan and worked his way through
college in a number of menial jobs. He was a talented athlete and played both
football and baseball, as a catcher, for the college.
During the summer of 1902 he was asked to play with a semi-pro team at
John Gunther, Inside Asia, Harper, New York, 1942. This information is
obtained from Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 325.
Quoted in Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 360.
Quoted in Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 597.
Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 290.
10 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 15.
Review Essay
$25 a week. He accepted, unaware he was breaking the amateur rules that
prevailed in college sport. This matter found its way to the Ohio Wesleyan
president. The owner of the team informed the college head that he had
never paid Rickey a cent. Rickey, when asked if this was correct, like George
Washington, could not tell a lie, and said ‘no’. He said he did not know that
college sport had an amateur code and had accepted payment to help pay his
way through school. He added, even if he had known there was such a code,
he still would have played for payment anyway.
His playing days at Ohio Wesleyan were over. Rickey’s honesty had a
positive impact on the college president. Ohio Wesleyan’s baseball coach
announced that he would be moving on at the end of the 1902 season. The
president offered the job to Rickey, which he accepted. Barely 21, he had his
first managerial position in baseball, as a coach of a college team.
One of the members of Rickey’s team was Charles ‘Tommy’ Thomas, an
African-American. Rickey was appalled by the racial slurs that were directed
at Thomas. At a game in Lexington at the University of Kentucky, in 1903,
opposition players and spectators chanted ‘Get that nigger off the field’. An
angry Rickey confronted the opposition coach, stating that his team would
not play without Thomas. A second, more famous, example occurred at South
Bend, Indiana in 1904. A hotel clerk refused to register Thomas. Rickey stood
up to Jim Crow and convinced the hotel’s manger to place a cot for Thomas in
his room. Rickey often claimed that this latter incident determined him on the
path to end baseball’s segregation. Thomas and Rickey were lifelong friends.11
Athletic coaching at Ohio Wesleyan and income from playing baseball,
first as a semi-pro with a minor league team, then as a major league player
with the St Louis Browns and the New York Highlanders helped Rickey pay
for his education. His career as a player (1905-1907, with two attempts at pinch
hitting in 1914)12 was cut short by a shoulder/arm injury which reduced the
snap in his throwing arm; something which catchers must have to cut off steals
to second base. Following the end of his playing days, and an unsuccessful
attempt to establish a legal practice, he worked as an athletic director and
coach at Ohio Wesleyan and, later on, at the University of Michigan.
In the second half of 1912, Robert Hedges, of the St Louis Browns, offered
11 The above three paragraphs are derived from Lowenfish, Branch Rickey,
pp. 14–24.
12 For statistics concerning Rickey’s playing career see J. L. Reichler
(ed.), The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Official Record of
Major League Baseball, Sixth Edition Revised, Updated and Expanded,
Macmillan, New York, 1985, p. 1328. He was also a field manager — the
person who determines calls and strategies during games — for both the
Browns and Cardinals for ten seasons. His record was desultory. See
p. 645.
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Rickey a job as his assistant and business manager, commencing in 1913. A
change in the ownership of the Browns, where he was seen as superfluous to
requirements, resulted in Rickey moving across town, in 1917, to the St Louis
Cardinals, as club president. Other than for a period in 1918, when he enlisted
in the war effort, he stayed with the Cardinals until 1942. From 1943 to 1950
he worked with the Brooklyn Dodgers and from 1951 to 1955 the Pittsburgh
Pirates. In 1959 he was appointed president of the nascent Continental
League, which was seeking to become MLB’s third major league.13 Pressure
from this upstart league resulted in MLB expanding from sixteen to twenty
clubs in 1961 and 1962.
A sporting league is a cartel. Competing clubs are mutually interdependent.
They need to cooperate with each other if they to produce a game, or a series
of games to determine a championship team. If a league and its member
clubs wish to generate interest and enhance its income earning potential
it will need to maximise the uncertainty of the results of various games
and contests. Uncertainty excites spectators, sponsors and broadcasters;
predictability turns them away. In a seminal paper Neale maintained:
Receipts depend upon competition among the … teams, not upon
business competition among the firms running the competitors,
for the greater the economic collusion and the more the sporting
competition, the greater the profits.14
The mutual interdependence of clubs within a sporting cartel and the
necessity for economic collusion, however, does not mean that such clubs do
not compete with each other commercially. Fellner has pointed out that:
Economic behaviour under fewness is imperfectly co-ordinated … The
competitive element stays significant; it applies mainly to the dynamic
aspects of the problem which are connected with ingenuity and
inventiveness and on the discounting of which it is difficult to reach
agreement.15
‘Imperfect co-ordination’ is a problem which characterises the operation
of sporting cartels. Clubs, within a league, compete vigorously with each
other in attempting to enhance their own welfare. The overarching dynamic
13 From 1903, MLB has comprised two leagues, the National and the
American, where the champions of each play off in a ‘World Series’.
14 Walter C. Neale, ‘The Peculiar Economics of Professional Team Sports:
A Contribution to the Theory of the Firm in Market Competition and
Sporting Competition’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 1964,
p. 2.
15 William A. Fellner, Competition Among the Few: Oligopoly and Similar
Market Structures, New York, 1965, First Edition 1949, p. 35. Italics in
the original.
Review Essay
of league behaviour is how to outwit and take advantage of rivals with whom
one has a continuing, interdependent relationship. Rickey’s distinctive
contribution to the history of baseball lay in his ‘ingenuity and inventiveness’
in competing with rivals.
MLB ‘solved’ the mutual interdependence problem by controlling the
labour market and severely limiting the economic freedom and income
earning potential of players. In 1879, MLB introduced the ‘reserve system’
which gave clubs a unilateral right to renew the contract of a player. Under
clause 10 (of a 1914 version) of the standard player contract ‘The player will,
at the option of the club, enter into a contract for the succeeding season
upon all the terms and conditions of this contract … unless it is increased or
decreased by mutual agreement’.16 This clause enabled clubs to maintain a
perpetual hold on players and denied them the ability to take up employment
with other clubs. Clubs could also trade players.
An example, possibly the most famous or infamous, which, incidentally,
happened to involve Rickey, demonstrates the extent of the power the reserve
system afforded management in its dealing with players. In 1952, Ralph
Kiner, of Rickey’s Pittsburgh Pirates, tied the league for the most home runs.
He was the only player of any quality in the Pirates’ squad, who finished last.
Rickey offered Kiner a contract for 1953 which included a 25 per cent wage
cut, the maximum allowed under baseball’s employment rules at that time.
Kiner objected. Rickey refused to budge. He said to Kiner, ‘We finished last
with you and we can finish last without you’.17
While the reserve system protected clubs from attempts (raids?) by other
clubs to obtain their players, it did not solve the problem of obtaining ‘new’
players who were not contracted to major league clubs. American baseball,
during the time of Rickey, operated a major league (or rather two major
leagues)18 and a series of minor leagues. The latter, depending on the quality
of players and their commercial attractiveness, were designated as AA, A, B,
C and D. The number of these leagues waxed and waned with the fortunes
and circumstances of the times. In 1910, for example, 46 minor leagues
commenced the season, 42 completed it. These figures dropped dramatically
in 1918, the height of America’s involvement in World War I, to nine and one,
respectively. By 1928, they had recovered to 30 and 24, respectively.19
16 See American League Baseball Club of Chicago v Chase, 149 NYS 6
(1914), at p. 10.
17 See Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp. 518–19; and C. P. Korr, The End of
Baseball As We Knew It: The Players Union, 1960–81, University of
Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2002, p. 18.
18 See note 13.
19 See Seymour, Baseball: The Golden Age, p. 401.
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Major league clubs could always discover a young prospect and sign him
before a minor league club did. However, many or most players, would first be
signed and obtain employment with minor league clubs. In the early decades
of the twentieth century, MLB and the minor leagues entered into a series
of deals to regulate the movement and payment for players into the majors.
Not all of the AA leagues were party to such arrangements and, irrespective
of this, the minors wanted to receive a high price, and major league clubs
wanted to pay as little as possible, for players moving to the majors.20
This was a generic problem for all major league clubs. It was, however,
more of a problem for less financially well off, small city clubs, like the St Louis
Cardinals. They lacked the wherewithal to compete for quality players with
rich, big city clubs.
After returning from military service, and resuming his managerial
duties with the Cardinals, Rickey worked out a solution to these problems. He
created what became known as the farm system. Rickey convinced Cardinals’
president and major share holder, Samuel Breadon, to purchase and/or
enter into business arrangements with minor league clubs. He also employed
a network of scouts and coaches. Scouts travelled far and wide, seeking to
discover young prospects. Rickey also made use of pre-season tryout camps
to assess the skills of wanabees. Those with potential were offered contracts
and allocated, ‘farmed out’, to various minor league clubs, controlled by the
Cardinals, to be tutored in the finer points of the game by Rickey’s coaching
staff. As players’ skills were ‘developed’, they were moved from lower to higher
minor leagues, with the most able making their way onto the Cardinal’s
roster. This obviated the need to pay ‘high’ prices for ‘new’ players from
(independent) minor league clubs, as had been the case hitherto. Moreover,
players, surplus to requirements could be sold, or traded, to other major
league clubs.
The farm system enabled Rickey to hoard a veritable small army of playing
talent.21 By the end of the 1930s, the Cardinals controlled more than 700
players, with interests in over 30 clubs. Rickey moved to the Brooklyn Dodgers
in 1943. In 1946, the Dodgers farm system had over 600 players in 27 farm
clubs.22 With both the Cardinals and the Dodgers, Rickey negotiated a clause
in his contracts whereby he would receive ten per cent of the sale for all minor
20 Seymour, Baseball: The Golden Age, pp. 400–22; and R. F. Burk, Much
More Than a Game: Players, Owners and American Baseball Since 1921,
University of Nebraska Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2001, pp. 3-39.
21 In due course, other clubs emulated the Cardinals and the farm system
became a mainstay of MLB.
22 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp. 131 and 387.
Review Essay
and major league players.23 He operated under the maxim that ‘It is better
to trade a player a year too early than a year too late.’24 The farm system was
depicted as being akin to ‘a chain gang’.25 Rickey was seen, following his move
to the Dodgers, by sportswriters as ‘El Cheapo’.26
Lowenfish refers to the Republican Rickey as being ‘a fervent believer in
the American system of capitalist individualism’. He recounts a speech he gave
during the 1936 presidential campaign about the need to fight vigorously
for traditional American liberty, and that the election was a choice between
government of law and government of men by executive order; and how he
hated dictators in government, politics and baseball.27 In the latter 1940s,
three players mounted a legal challenge to baseball’s reserve system following
their expulsion from baseball after ‘jumping’ to the Mexican League, a short
lived venture which briefly competed with MLB for players.28 Rickey, in the
context of McCarthyism, said ‘Those people who oppose the reserve system
have avowed Communist tendencies’. A lawyer representing the players, John
L. Flynn, threatened Rickey with a defamation suit. Rickey backed down.29
Maybe, his mouth got the better of him. And then again, maybe it did not.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Rickey’s statements concerning
‘capitalist individualism’, ‘traditional American liberty’, his condemnation of
‘government of men by executive order’ and his abhorrence of ‘dictatorships’
was contradicted by his support for and use of the reserve system and his
development of the farm system. They were the ultimate sources of his
authority and his ability to derive a ‘high’ income from baseball. His rights
were players’ wrongs. The monopsony in which he operated restricted the
‘individual rights’ of players, denied them the same liberty afforded to other
employees to change and choose whom they could work for, ensured that
23 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp. 140 and 318.
24 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 141.
25 Burk, Much More Than a Game, pp. 40–68, entitles a chapter examining
baseball employment during the 1930s as ‘Working on a Chain Gang’.
26 See Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp. 325, 335–36, 380, 399–400, 454,
and 479–80.
27 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp. 181, 273 and 308.
28 For an account of the Mexican League war see Lee Lowenfish, The
Imperfect Diamond: A History of Baseball’s Labor Wars, Da Capo Press,
New York, 1991, Revised Edition, First Edition, 1980, pp. 155–68. The
relevant case is Gardella v Chandler 172 F 2d 402 (1949). MLB has been
exempted from actions under the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. See
Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v National League of Professional
Baseball Clubs 259 US 200 (1922); Toolson v New York Yankees 346 US
445 (1953); Flood v Kuhn 407 US 258 (1972); and Curt Flood Act 1998.
29 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 468.
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their wages and where they worked were determined by dictatorial, executive
orders by men hidden away in offices. In his broader dealings with players
under baseball’s employment rules, including, if not especially, the farm
system which he developed, Rickey appears to be nothing more than selfserving, if not hypocritical.30
Lowenfish, who had earlier published a work which sought to explain the
eventual demise of the reserve system, from ‘a perspective sympathetic to the
player’,31 does not even acknowledge Rickey’s contradictory behaviour, let
alone attempt to provide a rationale for it. Lowenfish has fallen prey to that
disease which sometimes afflicts biographers; of being unable to distance
himself from the subject matter of his research.
Rickey moved to New York in late 1942, to manage the Brooklyn Dodgers.
As energetic as ever, he thought long and hard about enhancing the Dodgers’
chances of success. He turned his mind to finding new sources of playing
talent. He identified two potential sources. They were players from Latin
America, and closer to home, the Negro leagues.32 He rejected the former,
for reasons of both prejudice against their colour and the added burden of
a language barrier.33 He focused his attention on the latter. He ‘wanted to
be the first to mine the vast untapped market of black talent to sign the best
players for the Dodgers’.34
30 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 477, refers to an academic article that
Rickey circulated to MLB owners and executives by his son in law
John Eckler, which defended the antitrust exemption that had been
afforded to baseball (note 28 above). See John Eckler, ‘BaseballSport or Commerce’, University of Chicago Law Review, Fall 1949,
pp. 56–78. Lowenfish is unaware that in 1946, MLB received legal
advice that the reserve system would not survive scrutiny in a court
of equity. The report recommended that MLB engage in a policy of
‘misinformation’ to persuade players and have them acknowledge the
necessity of the reserve system to baseball’s survival. Rickey, given his
prominence in the inner workings of MLB, would have been aware of this
report. See Joint Major League Committee, Report Of Major League
Steering Committee For Submission To The National And American
Leagues At Their Meetings In Chicago (1946), available at http:/www.
businessofbaseball.com/docs.thm#sterringcommittee. This is drawn from
Mitchell Nathanson, ‘The Irrelevance of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption: A
Historical Review’, Rutgers Law Journal, Fall 2005, pp. 8–16.
31 Lowenfish, The Imperfect Diamond, p. 23.
32 He also invited young Japanese-Americans held in internment camps
during World War II to tryout for the Dodgers. Lowenfish, Branch Rickey,
p. 358.
33 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 349.
34 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 354.
Review Essay
The events surrounding Rickey’s choice of Jackie Robinson as the
‘appropriate’ person to break baseball’s colour bar are well known.35 The
major contribution of Lowenfish is his highlighting of Rickey’s concerns of a
hostile backlash by white America and the extent of the thought and planning
he invested in attempting to ensure that Robinson’s integration would
occur as smoothly as possible. Rickey believed that such problems would be
minimised by a person with a strong character, a clean living family man,
someone who understood the broader implications of what his employment
meant for America. Lowenfish recounts the famous initial interview between
the two, where Rickey impressed on Robinson the importance of not fighting
back when confronted with racism.
Robinson’s first season in the Dodgers’ organisation was spent with the
Montreal Royals, because ‘there was no deep tradition of white racism in
Canada’. Rickey admonished African-American leaders to not overplay the
significance of Robinson breaking into the majors because of fears of a
backlash. He put down attempts by Dodgers’ players who resisted Robinson’s
employment and, as he had more than 40 years earlier when confronted by
racism from opposition teams (in the case of ‘Tommy’ Thomas), stared down
such opposition.36
In 1950 Rickey fell out with his fellow Dodgers’ owner, Walter O’Malley,
who bought out Rickey’s shares. He continued his career in baseball with the
Pittsburgh Pirates, but was unable to emulate the success he had experienced
with both the Cardinals and Dodgers. A major reason for this was the
difficulties the Pirates, under Rickey, experienced in being able to sign new
talent. In the 1950s, a significant change occurred in the operation of the
baseball labour market. In previous decades, new talent happily entered into
contracts with major league clubs. They simply signed on the dotted line; and
may, or may not, have been offered a small ‘bonus’, to induce their signing.
Rickey, for example, provided Robinson with a $3,500 signing bonus. A naïve
Mickey Mantle, who in due course would become a legendary hitter with the
New York Yankees, signed for $1,100 in 1951.37
Other young players showed more savvy. Rather than sign with the first
club that displayed interest in them, they would play the clubs off against each
35 See, for example, Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie
Robinson and his Legacy, Vintage Books, New York, 1984; Jules Tygiel
(ed.), The Jackie Robinson Reader: Perspectives on an American
Hero, Dutton, New York, 1997; Scott Simon, Jackie Robinson and the
Integration of Baseball, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2002; and
Burns, Baseball, The Sixth Inning.
36 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp. 321–85 and 427–46.
37 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp. 376 and 510.
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other. Signing bonuses increased dramatically, with ‘hot prospects’ receiving
six figure offers.38 Such players, many of whom never managed to establish
careers in MLB, received substantially higher incomes than existing players
who found themselves ‘trapped’ by baseball’s reserve system. In 1950, for
example, the average income of major league players was slightly more than
$13,000.39 Rickey found it difficult to obtain young talented players in this
changed environment, as he had previously been able to with the Cardinals
and Dodgers.
In 1958 both the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants relocated to
Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. The loss of two teams resulted
in agitation from New York politicians to fill this void. In turn, a nascent
Continental League was formed, which sought to become baseball’s third
major league. MLB resolved this challenge by expanding from sixteen to
twenty clubs in 1961 and 1962. The New York Mets joined the National
League in 1962.40
Rickey was appointed president of the Continental League. One of the
issues he considered was how the proposed third major league would obtain
players, given the operation of the reserve and farm systems. Uppermost in
his mind were the high bonuses being paid to new and unproven players.
Rickey proposed the introduction of an unrestricted draft of first year players,
by clubs in the existing leagues and the proposed third league.41
Drafting denies players the ability to offer their services to competing
clubs and utilise the market to improve their wages and employment
conditions. Clubs would choose players in terms of the reverse order of how
they had finished in the previous year. If players did not accept the offer they
received from their drafting club, they would not be able to play in MLB. In
short, Rickey, consistent with the manner in which he liked to operate in a
labour market, where management held the whip hand and/or players had
no or were denied their rights, sought to extend the controls embedded in the
reserve and farm systems, to new, uncontracted players.
Prior to his move from St Louis to New York, Rickey in an aside to a
sports writer said that he did not think that he had accomplished much in
his life.42 First and last he was a baseball man. He perceived that the key to
baseball glory was dependent on employer dominance of the labour market.
38 See P. M. Gregory, The Baseball Player: An Economic Study, Public
Affairs Press, Washington, 1956, pp. 163-169.
39 Gregory, The Baseball Player, p. 100.
40 See Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp.533–79; and Mitchell Nathanson, ‘The
Irrelevance of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption’, pp. 21–42.
41 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, pp. 556 and 568–69.
42 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 319.
Review Essay
He developed the farm system to provide a cheap source of labour which
he could exploit. Farming, in turn, provided him with an edge against rival
clubs. His advocacy of the player draft as president of the Continental League
was also designed to control the player’s market. Gene Hermanski, who
played with the Dodgers and Pirates, said of Rickey, that ‘He had a heart of
gold and he kept it’. Enos Slaughter, of the Cardinals said Rickey ‘was always
going to the vault for a nickel of change’.43
In his never ending quest to outwit and take advantage of opponents,
his ‘ingenuity and inventiveness’ led him to search for talented AfricanAmerican players and end the colour bar that operated in MLB. He saw
in such players a new source of inexpensive talent. In employing Jackie
Robinson in 1947, Branch Rickey, the inventor of baseball’s ‘chain gang’, the
man dubbed ‘El Cheapo’, baseball’s master paternalist, had done something
that he could be proud of, something important, something for which he will
always be remembered. He became a champion of civil rights and a beacon in
opposition to the segregation and racism which has bedevilled America.
Braham Dabscheck
University of Melbourne
43 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, p. 7.
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