Branch Rickey in Pittsburgh: Baseball's Trailblazing General Manager for the Pirates, 1950-1955

by Andrew O'Toole

Overview

Branch Rickey was one of the most important and charismatic figures in all of baseball, the archetype for all general managers who would follow. His contributions to the game were both numerous and highly significant; they include the desegregation of the majors, airline travel to road games, and the innovation of the minor league "farm" system.

This work focuses on Rickey's tenure as the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, from 1950 through 1955. In addition to contemporary accounts, Rickey's personal correspondence and interoffice memorandums are used to document his struggle to revamp the fate of a small-market team.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786408399
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	08/01/2000
Pages:	223
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.45(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Andrew O’Toole has written cover stories for Pittsburgh History Magazine and Elysian Fields Quarterly. His article “Clemente’s First Spring” won the 1998 Macmillan–SABR Baseball Research Award. He lives in Lebanon, Ohio.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	Introduction: From Small Things, Big Things One Day Come	1
1	A Five Year Plan	7
2	Heaven Help the Pirates	23
3	Rickey Dinks	49
4	Wait Until Those Cubans Get a Load of This Pirate Act	85
5	The Sun Will Be Rising	115
6	I Am Not Down and Out	145
Appendix	Branch Rickey's Letters	169
	Notes	201
	Index	209

Editorial Reviews

highly focused...interesting...fascinating...valuable”—SABR Bibliography Committee Newsletter; “a...solid account of Rickey’s five-year tenure with the Pirates...details the frustrations surrounding Rickey’s peripatetic, almost frantic efforts to revive the Pirates”—The International Journal of the History of Sport; “the first book chronicling [Rickey’s] final (but still impacting) years as an executive with the Bucs”—USA Today Sports Weekly.

From the Publisher

"the first book chronicling [Rickey's] final (but still impacting) years as an executive with the Bucs"

USA Today Sports Weekly

a...solid account of Rickey's five-year tenure with the Pirates...details the frustrations surrounding Rickey's peripatetic, almost frantic efforts to revive the Pirates

The International Journal of the History of Sport

highly focused...interesting...fascinating...valuable

SABR Bibliography Committee Newsletter