Branch Rickey in Pittsburgh: Baseball’’s Trailblazing General Manager for the Pirates

Branch Rickey was one of the most important and charismatic figures in all of baseball, the archetype for all general managers who would follow. His contributions to the game were both numerous and highly significant; they include the desegregation of the majors, airline travel to road games, and the innovation of the minor league farm system. This work focuses on Rickey’s tenure as the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, from 1950 through 1955. In addition to contemporary accounts, Rickey’s personal correspondence and interoffice memorandums are used to document his struggle to revamp the fate of a small-market team.

Andrew O’Toole has written cover stories for Pittsburgh History Magazine and Elysian Fields Quarterly. His article ＂Clemente’s First Spring＂ won the 1998 Macmillan-SABR Baseball Research Award. He lives in Maineville, Ohio.