May 4, 2009

We’ve recently noted some lawyers currently active in their sport, but we would be remiss if we didn’t note one of the greatest lawyer-managers of all time, Branch Rickey. Of course, it was he who brought the first African American into major league baseball. As general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he began to work his plan to break the color barrier in 1945.

Rickey had gotten his law degree from the University Of Michigan, and did practice a few years before going into baseball management. He had many more years experience in baseball, first as a manager, then as a general manager, than he did as a practicing attorney. It would seem, though, that he may have drawn upon his experience in legal practice when he tested Jackie Robinson’s calm under fire just before signing him. He had to see if Robinson was the right player to weather the abuse that would certainly be hurled at the first black major leaguer. Like an attorney coaching his client for trial, he fired off a volley of racist verbal abuse at Robinson, who showed the strength to shrug it off. He then knew that he had selected the man who could withstand the trials ahead.

            Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson

Of course, Branch Rickey knew the game, and he knew the awful realities of the racism that intruded upon it. But we’d like to think that his legal background contributed to his selection of the player who had both the skills and the temperament that it took to finally break major league baseball’s color barrier in 1947.