Branch Rickey Marquee Hall of Fame 1967

The playing record is small and real: 120 games between 1905 and 1914, 82 hits, a .239 average, 67 games behind the plate. He refused to play on Sundays, which limited him further. He took a law degree at Michigan and coached there while studying.

Running St. Louis in the 1920s he began buying minor-league clubs outright rather than bidding for their players, which is the farm system and which every organization copied. He moved to Brooklyn in 1942.

In 1945 he signed Robinson, and on April 15, 1947 Robinson played, which this archive holds a page for and names Rickey in. He had spent years planning it and choosing the man, and he asked Robinson to take three seasons of abuse without answering back. The Veterans Committee elected him in 1967, two years after he died.