To Absent Friends - Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin

1928 - 2017

Legendary, and I suppose it is acceptable to use that term, New York City newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin died yesterday at the age of 88.  I suppose that it is also acceptable to say that Breslin, a hard drinking (although he was sober for the last thirty years of his life), hard hitting, shoot from the hip newspaper guy was among the last types of newspapermen of his kind, right out of "The Front Page".  

I first became aware of Breslin when I was barely a teenager and read his book about the hapless 1962 New York Mets, "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?".  Over the years, I read a couple of other of Breslin's books, including his comic Mob novel, "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight", and, a few years ago, his biography of Branch Rickey titled, simply enough, "Branch Rickey".  As I say in the post cited below,  it should be read "if for no other reason, the book is worth reading just to appreciate the way Jimmy Breslin writes."

http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2011/04/branch-rickey-by-jimmy-breslin.html 

Breslin was best known for his stories about New York City and the people who lived there.  The column cited in most of the obituaries today, however, is one that I never read, but is somewhat famous, known mainly as "the Gravedigger column".  Here it is, and I highly recommend that you read it.  From the New York Herald Tribune in November, 1963:

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/digging-jfk-grave-was-his-honor-jimmy-breslin-1.6481560

RIP Jimmy Breslin.

"Branch Rickey" by Jimmy Breslin

I have just finished reading the book you see pictured here, "Branch Rickey" by Jimmy Breslin. It is not a lengthy book - you will finish it in one or two sittings - but it is another book that fans of baseball history should read.

There is probably no front office executive in all of baseball history more important or influential that Branch Rickey. He died almost fifty years ago, and casual followers of the game may not know of Rickey's place in the game's history. For that reason alone, it is good that this book was written. People with a sense of baseball history may not learn anything new here, but, if for no other reason, the book is worth reading just to appreciate the way Jimmy Breslin writes.

The main focus of the book centers around Rickey's greatest accomplishment: signing Jackie Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers and forcing the integration of major league baseball. One thing I did learn was of a meeting among and a resolution passed by MLB owners after Robinson's 1946 season in Montreal that was aimed to prevent Robinson, or any other "negro player" from ever playing in the major leagues. Also, the shameful silence from white sportswriters, many of whom were in the ball clubs' pockets, regarding the segregation that existed in major league baseball.

But the highlight of the book was the way Breslin wrote of his subjects and the comments that he made. Some samples:

• On Rickey's ability as a spellbinder: When he spoke "the cigar in his right hand provided the smoke and his waving left hand was the mirror."


• On Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey: "(Yawkee) would spend the next twenty years keeping blacks off his teams, and he got what he deserved, which was nothing."


• On Rickey and politics: "Rickey took the sport of baseball into politics, of which nobody in baseball today knows anything beyond giving city council members free box seats."


• On Satchel Paige: "Did he need the money? Whatever Paige had made lasted as long as a puddle in the sun."

I could go on and on with a bunch of great quotes like that about Walter O'Malley, Leo Durocher and many others (for Pirates fans, there are even a few about Bob Prince, Roy Face, and Bill Mazeroski), but you'll enjoy them a lot more by reading the book.