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1960 • Baseball Clip • Jackie Robinson interviews Branch Rickey - Radio Broadcast · Retro Sports Radio: Classic Games from History

• 0:00
  This is Retro Sports Radio. Visit RetroSeasons.com for more sports history.
• 0:07
  Today I'm privileged to have as my guest, Mr. Baseball, Branch Rickey.
• 0:12
  50 or 100 years from now, my only claim to fame may well be the fact that I was the first Negro to play Major League Baseball.
• 0:20
  This could never have happened had it not been for Branch Rickey.
• 0:23
  I'll be talking to Mr. Rickey, the President of the New Continental League, right after this important message.
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  Well, Mr. Rickey, let's talk about the American League.
• 0:35
  Washington wanted to move their ball club to one of your member teams, Minneapolis, St. Paul area.
• 0:42
  Did the Major League put the whammy on that move? What happened?
• 0:45
  We're in the neighborhood of Gossam.
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  I can tell you that my understanding is that Washington itself wanted to move.
• 0:53
  I had a nice talk with Calvin Griffith, the owner and president of the Washington Club.
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  And Calvin Griffith has a hard road to hoe, and he wanted to move.
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  The American League would not let him move.
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  If the American League is going to give some of its players, the dregs, the outcasts, the fellows they don't want, to anybody,
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  they would certainly have some moral obligation to Calvin.
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  You talk, Mr. Rickey, as if the expansion of a ninth and tenth team in the league would only have three eighth-place ball clubs
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  rather than one like they have now.
• 1:21
  They'd have Washington in eighth place, for example. I'd like to see them higher.
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  But suppose they were to finish eighth.
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  The next ones would not be a good ninth or tenth because they wouldn't have any players.
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  You can't get players for a ninth and tenth club in the present American League or the National League.
• 1:35
  That's the silliness of it. That's the absurdity of it.
• 1:37
  Well, where does that put the Continental League in?
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  It's what Del Webb said it was. Silly.
• 1:41
  Silly. All right. Now, where does this put the Continental League?
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  They're looking for four teams if they expand two more. Now, you're looking for eight teams.
• 1:49
  Yes, we don't get our players to contend with the American League.
• 1:52
  It's four years from now and more before we would expect to play the American and National League clubs in a World Series.
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  We are going to play on an equality of talent. We have an equal distribution of players.
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  We play one another during that period.
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  We will produce boys that may steal 60 bases, a 20-game winner in the pitching department, some kid may hit 400.
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  As a matter of fact, our recruitment comes chiefly, I hope, out of the free agency field.
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  And the American and National League know that.
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  And while in their heads, many of them favor us, in their hearts, they fear us.
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  Mr. Rick, if any plans for trying to have a uniformity of ballparks?
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  I think when I was in baseball, many people want to know, why wouldn't a new league, if it starts, try to make all the ball?
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  We are very definite in the extraction of our parks.
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  We are hoping that we'll approximate the same number of feet to the left field and the right field foul-line quarters.
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  I think this would certainly add considerably.
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  It means more to your, as you well know, it would mean more to your records, to your statistics at the end of the year in judging players.
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  Mr. Ricky, another thing. With Little League flourishing all over the country,
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  don't you think the forming of the Continental League would give great hope to these youngsters who want to get in?
• 3:12
  It percolates down. It is entirely possible, Jackie, that this game's future lies in the direction of a prevailing number of cities, all major league.
• 3:28
  179 million people with 20 great cities, three times the population of the ones in the American League, they need it.
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  They ought to have it. They respond to it. And that's an invigorating and an inspiring thing.
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  And while it rehabilitates the minor leagues, it reaches clear on down.
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  Artistically, the high spot in baseball is the major leagues.
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  The amateurs, down to the little leagues, they must be inspired.
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  And the more we play it, the more we find recreation, re-creation, recreational pursuits for the boyhood of America,
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  the more you attack the juvenile problem, the vacation period in the summertime.
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  This thing of nothing to do is the most damnable thing that can come into a boy's life.
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  They're not creative. You can have great symphonies written by people of leisure, people who are masters of their own time.
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  But you give leisure nothing to do, pure idleness, to people who have no creativeness, and most boys do not at their age.
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  It can be a tragic thing.
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  Well, Mr. Rickey, I just want to say that I think you know how I feel.
• 4:37
  I sincerely want to say that I hope that God gives you many, many more years of successful effort here in this country of ours.
• 4:45
  Sure, Robbie, your kind words must be somewhat extravagant because of our long and pleasant personal relationship.
• 4:54
  That just about does it for now, fans. See you soon.