Baseball Color Line - Bill Veeck and Branch Rickey

Bill Veeck and Branch Rickey

Baseball executive Bill Veeck claimed that in 1942, he tried to buy the then-moribund Philadelphia Phillies and stock them with Negro league stars. Veeck maintained for years that when Landis got wind of his plans, he and National League president Ford Frick scuttled it in favor of another bid by William B. Cox.

In his autobiography, Veeck, as in Wreck, in which he discussed his abortive attempt to buy the Phillies, Veeck also stated that he wanted to hire black players for the simple reason that in his opinion the best black athletes "can run faster and jump higher" than the best white athletes.

Veeck realized that there was no actual rule against integration; it was just an unwritten policy, a "Gentlemen's Agreement." Veeck stated that Landis and Frick prevented him from buying and thus integrating the Phillies, on various grounds.

Around 1945, Branch Rickey, General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, held tryouts of black players, under the cover story of forming a new team called the "Brooklyn Brown Dodgers." The Dodgers were, in fact, looking for the right man to break the color line. Rickey had an advantage in that he was already an employee of the Dodgers. Also, Landis had died by this time and new commissioner Happy Chandler was more supportive of integrating the major leagues. However, Veeck's story is arguably false based on press accounts of the time; notably, Philadelphia's black press never mentioned anything about a Veeck bid.