Free Branch Rickey by Jimmy Breslin Page A

do it, you know that he can always do that. And I turned to him . . . and I said there’s no man in baseball can beat it. And he turned to me and said, ‘Mr. Rickey—’ The tears were almost in his eyes. Serious as he could be. ‘Do you really believe that he . . . that a colored man’—he didn’t really call him that—‘a colored man can be a human being?’
    â€œWell, we had to wait for time to change him. Then did it ever!
    â€œHopper has the player at Montreal. They win the pennant. They carry him, the manager, off on their shoulders. They carry Robinson off on their shoulders. And on his way back to Greenwood, this man just stops in my office . . . He said, ‘I’ll take only a minute of your time.’ He said this fella can make good on your Brooklyn club if you give him a good chance. But he said if he doesn’t, Mr. Rickey, he said, don’t send him to Hollywood. Don’t send him to St. Paul. Let me have him back. He says he’s not only a great player, he’s a gentle man.”

CHAPTER SIX
    In the fall of 1945, with Robinson under a contract that was about to be announced, Rickey decided to get out of social engineering for a few moments and pull some money out of the sky. He rented Ebbets Field for a black-versus-white exhibition game. That Sunday in October came up with a light, cold rain. Pitching for the black team was Don Newcombe, nineteen, of the Newark Eagles. He had been told that major league scouts would be watching. He was enthralled. There was one scout there for sure: Clyde Sukeforth sat in a box behind home plate. When Newcombe threw his fastball, Sukeforth watched with eyes that saw something of the pitcher’s future. Someday a big winner, the scout thought. And everybody says he can hit.
    Newcombe pitched two innings. His arm grew heavier by the throw and throbbed in the rain, and soon he had to get out. He walked off with tears in his eyes. In the dressing room he cried some more. He was sure he had just blown a career. No white scouts were ever going to see him in Newark. Through his tears Newcombe saw one white man in the room. It was Sukeforth, who came up to him and ignored both his color and his tears.
    â€œI like the fastball,” Sukeforth said. He asked Newcombe to be at the Dodgers office in the morning. Newcombe thought it was for the Brown Dodgers team. When they met, Rickey never told him anything different. Just as a day or so later he left Roy Campanella thinking about a Negro league team. Rickey talked for hours but never mentioned the Dodgers except as something attainable someday, maybe. He wanted to know everything about Campanella because he wanted Campanella to handle his Dodgers pitchers, but he couldn’t say that yet. Rickey’s plan consisted of causing an explosion by signing Robinson to play with Montreal. Once that blew over, he could sign and announce both Campanella and Newcombe.
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    In January of 1946, Emil “Buzzie” Bavasi returned from three years of infantry fighting in Italy to a job as business manager in the Dodgers farm system. It was good that he had a steady job waiting, but he wasn’t ready just yet. He asked Mr. Rickey if he could have some time off to travel to Sea Island, Georgia, to throw the war out of his life and feel the sand on his feet. Of course Rickey said yes.
    â€œBask in the surroundings and love your wife,” he told Bavasi.
    A few days later Rickey called and said, “I need you.” Bavasi flew up and walked into the Dodgers office in time for a meeting with Rickey and the organization’s six top scouts. These men were known wherever anybody played the game: George Sisler, Mickey McConnell, Wid Matthews, Eddie McCarrick, Clyde Sukeforth, and Tom Greenwade. Bavasi made the eighth at the table. The meeting was about the three black prospects—Robinson, pitcher Don Newcombe, and catcher Roy Campanella. All would be brought up