Branch Rickey Quotes

Branch Rickey once said of me that I was a man with an infinite capacity for immediately making a bad thing worse.

Luck is the residue of design

Pointing to the mutual envy of businessmen and politicians who are often out of their field in each other's area,, the author quotes the wisdom, "A wise shoemaker sticks to his trade and maintains a mouthful of nails.

But how can we tally what an achievement it was to endure what Jackie Robinson endured those first few years? It was an incalculable and heroic sacrifice that can never be reckoned or understood by any conventional standards. Robinson did what he agreed to do when he met that day with Branch Rickey, and he changed the game forever. It was a singular feat of such great moral strength that all athletic strength must pale in comparison. With God’s help, one man lifted up a whole people and pulled a whole nation into the future.

On Friday, April 6, Bostic and two other journalists escorted Thomas and McDuffie to Bear Mountain. Startled Dodgers officials immediately refused to grant a tryout, claiming it could not be fitted into the day’s activities. While team president-general manager Branch Rickey invited the group to lunch, he angrily berated Bostic for his confrontational approach

Moreover, throughout its existence, most observers perceived the USL as a “Branch Rickey controlled league,” an assertion unsubstantiated by existing evidence.

Prejudice,” Rickey told the table. “It reflects an attitude of a great many people in this country who don’t introspect themselves very closely about their own prejudices. . . . You can’t meet it with words. You can’t take prejudice straight on. It must be done by proximity. Proximity! The player alongside you. No matter what the skin color or language. Win the game. Win all. Get the championship and the check that goes with it.

I figured I would be able to rely on big-name historians whom I have yet to read and that this would be immensely pleasurable. And then I read the books. History writers should be put not in the jail but under it.

Your enemy will be out in force. But you cannot meet him on his own low ground.

I'm afraid they may not win it, in which case many will blame bad luck, which would not be the entire case. Luck is the residue of design.

It is not the honor that you take with you, but the heritage you leave behind.

I drew on the treasure trove of Dodgers literature to assist in my portrayals of Walter O’Malley, Branch Rickey, and Larry MacPhail. Of most note were Bums by Peter Golenbock; The Lords of Baseball by Harold Parrott; Rickey & Robinson by Harvey Frommer; The Roaring Redhead by Don Warfield; The Dodgers Move West by Neil J. Sullivan; and The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn.

It was Branch Rickey who originated the saying cited in part one: “Luck is the residue of design.