This Month
Hunter Manchak Reviews Lee Lowenfish's
Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman
Thursday April 17, 2007 1:00pm
Branch Rickey's place in baseball history has always been inextricably linked with Jackie Robinson and the breaking of the color line--and rightly so. To be the primary motive power behind the most socially significant event that American sports has wrought will have that effect. Yet as grand a place as Branch Rickey occupies in our nation's cultural landscape, it actually does him injustice as a baseball man. Enter Lee Lowenfish's biography, Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman, which, at its core, is an attempt to expound upon Rickey's myriad contributions to the game of baseball and to thusly carve out a much greater legacy for the man whose influence is unmistakable even today.
Lowenfish presents Rickey like a character Ayn Rand might have created, were she as influenced by Ruth and Wagner as by Kant and Nietzsche. As unflinchingly dedicated to his work in baseball as he was to his religion, his family, and to his belief in market capitalism, Rickey's faith in his own convictions at times bordered upon caricature.
So committed was Rickey to his faith that he refused to attend the ballpark or do any baseball business on Sundays, sometimes to the peril of his future in the sport. Even when the choice was between playing on Sundays or being released from the team, Rickey never wavered. From a more modern perspective, it would be easy to view such an action and label Rickey as a stubborn contrarian. However, such a glib designation would ignore the complexity of the man and his place in baseball's lore.
Indeed, far from being a detriment to his advancement of the sport, his faith provided an internal check for the business side of the man, whose passion for enterprise burned very nearly as strongly as that for his God. It was this dichotomy that would inform his many attempts to take the game to a new and greater place.
Nowadays we may take it for granted that baseball is both sport and business. However, this was not always the case. Indeed, Branch Rickey was one of the first to truly embrace the business side of baseball and to understand how the two could work together.
Seeing a need to compete financially with larger-market teams, Rickey came up with the idea of internalizing the minor leagues. By doing so, the team was able to control the players when they were ready for the Major Leagues, either employing them or selling them to another team for a tidy profit. In such an action, we see a clear example of on-field success sometimes taking a back seat to economics, something we now assume is a product of more modern times.
Rickey was also at the forefront of many once radical ideas that are now commonplace in the sport. He advocated placing numbers and team logos on players' jerseys and opened the first full-time spring training facility. In addition, he championed promotions like "ladies' day" and had an all-kids section of the ballpark. While such innovations were good for fans and brought them closer to the game, Rickey also saw them as easy endeavors that could have significant long-term benefits to the team's bottom line.
It was Rickey's preternatural understanding of what made a successful all-around ball club that set him apart from his contemporaries and that makes him important from a historical perspective. In addition to employing advanced training methods and innovative in-game strategy (many of which are now gospel in baseball circles) Rickey was one of the first to take an analytical approach to the game. By charting pitches and employing statisticians to sift through the data, Rickey sought a better understanding of the game in order to have a leg up on his competitors. More importantly, however, was that Rickey was demonstrating the benefit of challenging the conventional baseball wisdom, the true value of which is only now becoming evident.
Rickey's role in breaking baseball's color line was not only the logical extension of his creative mode of thinking, but also a microcosm of his career and his personality. Although Rickey believed strongly that integration was both socially and morally imperative, he also saw the value in it from a baseball and business standpoint. Too often the Rickey-Robinson story is told without mention of its more tangible benefits, perhaps believing doing so would diminish the tale's historical import.
Some critics have painted Rickey as an opportunist or as a robber baron of the Negro Leagues. And, if disregarding Rickey's life in and out of the game, a convincing argument could be made that this is indeed the case. However, when viewed in its totality, Rickey's role in integrating the game was merely an amalgam of his ingrained morality and his knowledge of the mechanisms of the free market; if integrating the game would not appeal to other owners' ethical centers, perhaps it would appeal to their wallets. In this way, Rickey's actions demonstrate yet another example of business helping the game, and not the other way around.
Too often historical sports writing--particularly baseball writing--becomes bogged down in nostalgia. The present era of sports is often depicted in binary opposition to the inviolate salad days of yore. Be it the increasing role of money in sports, steroids and HGH, the growth of statistical analysis, or simply the loss of some ineffable essence, the present era has come to be defined as a bastardization of true sport. Thus, historical writing is often more dirge than paean--an exploration of a bygone era never to return.
Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman, however, does not beat you over the head with such a message of negativity. Indeed, one of the book's most striking aspects is how similarly it presents Rickey's era actually to that which we currently inhabit. Instead of PED's threatening baseball's integrity, the sport worried about ringers or thrown games. Prima donna athletes behaved badly on and off the field just as they do today but without the 24-hour news cycle to expose them. Management and players maintained an ever-truculent relationship, arguing over pay and working conditions. And, small market franchises struggled to compete financially with those in larger cities--all no different than that world we know today.
If there is a criticism of Lowenfish's book it is that it has a tendency for tunnel vision towards Rickey and his greatness. This is especially evident in light of the article previously in this place. Nevertheless, the book is first a biography and second a book about baseball. As such, it is fitting and proper than the bulk of the 600 pages should be devoted primarily to Branch Rickey as a man: his family, his faith, and the passion that led him to the game. Lowenfish presents a compendium of facts and anecdotes about a life, the understanding of which is crucial for a complete understanding of the history of baseball and indeed, that of America.
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