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