The Old Brain

The reason the St. Louis Cardinals give night sweats to managers of other National League clubs is Branch Rickey, a chunky, bespectacled David Harumish man of 60, who is referred to with awed hush in organized baseball as "the Brain." Branch Rickey is full of endless surprises. As vice president and general manager of the Cards, he whisks forth young players nobody ever heard of and makes stars of them; he sells established stars to other clubs for huge sums and laughs when the stars fail to come through for their new owners. To the fury of the St. Louis fans, he sold his great pitcher, Dizzy Dean, to the Chicago Cubs for a reported $185,000, and in three years as a Cub the Dizzier won only 16 games. At swapping, selling or developing that strange commodity, ballplayers, Branch Rickey is without a peer.

When Rickey went to the Cardinals 25 years ago, the club had no more color or draw than the present-day St. Louis Browns. After he got back from France, where he served as a chemical warfare major in the A.E.F., he took stock. There was only one really good ballplayer on the team, Second Sacker Rogers Hornsby. There was a debt of $175,000; no money for a training trip that winter, not even enough for new uniforms.

Naturally, there were no funds to purchase stars from other teams, so Rickey dreamed up the farm system, i.e., buying minor-league clubs and developing young players on them. At first the other big-league teams hooted at "Rickey's chain gang," but by 1926 it began to pay off spectacularly. That year the Cards won not only the pennant but the World Series.

Today the Cardinals control 27 minor-league clubs--Columbus, Rochester, Sacramento, Houston and New Orleans are their five big proving grounds--and the once-despised farm system is now used by all other big-time teams.

Early in life Branch Rickey promised his mother he would never play ball on Sunday, and to this day he has never even seen a Sunday game. Born in Stockdale, Ohio, he taught country school and then, with $68 saved from his $35-a-month salary, he went to Ohio Wesleyan, where he was a star ballplayer, graduated in 1906, still serves on its board of trustees. Branch Rickey is a working Methodist: he doesn't drink or cuss. His greatest oath is "Judas Priest." Not only has he an encyclopedic knowledge of the professional skills and foibles of the 500-odd ballplayers he controls, but he keeps an extensive tab on their private morals.

After Rickey turned pro, he served the Reds, the St. Louis Browns and the N.Y. Americans as a not-very-good catcher. Then he got into the business end of baseball. Today he earns $50,000 plus a percentage of the club's take, the largest salary in baseball next to that of Tsar Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

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