Team Quotes - page 71
Bavasi thought he would be a star. Whatever O'Malley thought of Clemente's talent, however, did not matter as much as the matter of his color. He made it clear to Bavasi that bringing Clemente to Brooklyn would be a problem – less for the fans, he explained, than for the players, who might think that too many black men were taking jobs. Bavasi suggested they put the question to one of the players – Jackie Robinson. Bavasi explained the situation to Robinson, who asked who the team would trade or sell to make room to bring Clemente up to the Dodgers. Bavasi thought George Shuba, a white player, would be the one to go. Shuba was an outfielder, a good, though not in Bavasi's estimation, great player. He was, however, a popular one. Dropping him to bring up Clemente, who might not even be ready to start, Robinson suggested, would not be wise – to bring up Clemente now, he advised Bavasi, would set back by five years the effort to truly integrate the game.
Roberto Clemente
McGraw was an improviser, a teacher. He brought much to the game that keeps baseball fresh and suspenseful today-the hit-and-run play, the steal, the squeeze play, the uses of the bunt and the defenses against it. He helped turn the game into a thing of fluid beauty, infielders charging the plate or roaming far from their bases, outfielders moving with each pitch, racing in for base hits before them, backing each other in the outfield, entering the infield itself on rundown plays. Yet when the game changed radically, with the introduction of the livelier baseball, McGraw naturally shifted to a power emphasis, founding his team about such men as George Kelly, Bill Terry, Mel Ott. He knew, too, that the old pitching style of permitting a man to hit a deadened ball because it would then be caught in the big fields had to be changed, and his staffs led the league year after year in strikeouts, in earned-runs.
John McGraw