Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Messiah Made in St. Louis

In 1903, Major League Baseball established the World Series, with the best team from the American and National League battling it out for the right to be called world champions.

Both the “Show Me State” and the national pastime had done a phenomenal job of creating entertainment for the public. The 20th Century had gotten off to a rocking start, but the St. Louis Cardinals not so much.

From 1900-1917, the Cardinals had compiled just three winning seasons, and had finished last or second to last in the National League eight times. The newly established Browns were crushing the Cardinals when it came to attendance and were considered a second-tiered team.

If the Cardinals were going to start becoming competitive, something had to change, and someone had to make it happen.

In 1919, a sports executive and former baseball player had returned home after serving as an officer in the United States Army in France during World War I. His name was Branch Rickey.

This man, Branch Rickey, came into baseball and profoundly changed the game, and in St. Louis, nonetheless. Rickey brought his brainchild to the Show Me State called the farm system and ignited the Cardinals to the top of the National League for years to come.

He was born on December 20, 1881, in Portsmouth, Ohio. He went to college at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1899 and then went on to play both professional baseball and football in the early days of his career. 

How about that? Branch Rickey and Bo Jackson. Bo Jackson, of course, you’ll hear about later.

Outside of playing sports, he helped coach the Ohio Wesleyan University baseball team to help pay his school bills. 

God love his mother, she sent a dollar bill each month to help him out, but he always returned it. Rickey was determined to make it on his own. 

He barred profanity, poker playing, and drinking, while never managing or working on Sundays.

After several years of being an athlete, Rickey returned to college to receive his Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Michigan. While at Michigan, he again was the head baseball coach from 1910-13 compiling a record of 68-32-4. 

Then Rickey graduated from Michigan in 1913 and became a front office executive with the St. Louis Browns of Major League Baseball’s American League. 

What else did this man do before turning 40? 

Well, after being an executive with the Browns for four years, we went to serve his country in World War I. He was an elite in the US Army 1st Regiment Gas and Flame Division and then came home victoriously and returned to St. Louis. 

“He was Leonardo in baseball, he did everything. He was an artist, scientist, and genius of a million kinds. He invented the farm systems; he devised ways of playing the game and of training players that had never before been considered,” said Sportswriter George Okrent.

When Rickey returned to the Browns in 1919, he began to clash with the Browns owner Phil Ball and decided to join their crosstown rival, the Cardinals. 

And it’s a good thing he did. 

The 1919 season saw some changes that would eventually be beneficial for the Cardinals' future. In December, Sam Braedon, one of the largest stockholders of the team and owner of his own Automobile Company, accepts the position of club president. He convinces Branch Rickey to be vice president and general manager and he will be allowed to continue as the field manager of the team.

Through six seasons as the Cardinals manager, Rickey led the squad to three consecutive winning seasons from 1921-23, but that was not even the highlight of his tenure in St. Louis. 

“Starting the Cardinal farm system was no sudden stroke of genius. It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. We lived a precarious existence, other clubs would outbid us, they had money and a superior scouting system, and we had to take the leavings or nothing at all,” Branch Rickey said given his limited resources.  

Rickey begins to toy with the concept of a team-owned minor league farm system when he buys some shares of the Texas League team in Houston. So, he starts the first farm system. 

Then he decides to fire Hendricks as manager and named himself to lead the team. Rickey claimed this move was made to save money. But the truth was probably closer to the fact that Rickey loved being in uniform and on the field.

In the early 1920s, Rickey had invested in seven minor league clubs to enhance and develop the future talent of the Cardinals. The process would be known as the farm system.

The farm system was a spectacular success. Soon, Rickey had 800 players under contract on 32 teams, and every other Major League club had followed his lead.”

The beauty of the farm system was that it served as a training ground and provided experience for young players with the promise that any given player could make it to the major leagues on any given day. 

Rickey’s genius helped him master scouting, player acquisition, and development with business affairs. Not too long after inventing the farm system in St. Louis, other major league clubs caught on and began implementing the same strategy. 

But the Cardinals will always be the first team in baseball history to put the farm system into action. 

“Hitting alone will not win ball games,” Branch Rickey said once coming to the Cardinals. “I want speed on my team. I also want every man on this squad to know how to slide. I don’t say we’ll win any pennants, but I do think that my systematic training will lay the foundation for a pennant winner. If this is a theory, it’s blamed good practical theory.”

Rickey would stay general manager of the Cardinals for 23 years, and in the process helped lead them to six pennants and four world championships. 

Not to mention, the farm system made money, too. Branch Rickey was able to generate a steady enough supply of young talent to then sell them off for great profits to other teams. Meanwhile, keeping enough strong young talented players on the Cardinals to finish first many times over the next 25+ years. 

Rickey was able to bully and bluff major leaguers because they were all bound by the reserve clause, into absurd salaries. The reserve clause bound a player to one team for life unless traded. 

That changed in 1976 once free agency prevailed. 

As far as minor league players were concerned, they could just stay on the farms until, as Rickey liked to say, they ‘ripened into money.’ 

Understand too that projecting players into the future, three or four years, was essential for success. The Cardinals were bringing in an abundance of amateurs instead of minor-league players. 

For the Cardinals, even in an era of great home run hitting, the most important tool was running speed. 

Hitting takes days off, pitching takes days off, and speed NEVER takes days off. 

Rickey called it the only common denominator of offense and defense, believing it to be the best single indicator or potential in the big leagues. 

In addition, baseball highlights the individual more than any other sport. 

The American Diamond quotes, "Only in baseball can a team player be a pure individualist first and a team player second, within the rules and spirit of the game."

If you were a big Major League veteran, all of these new younger prospects coming up were putting excessive pressure on them. The competition among so many young players in the system operated more or less like natural selection. 

This was also happening at a time when baseball was becoming a power-hitting sport with home runs all over the place, and the hitters having it their way more than ever. 

Bear in mind the success that the St. Louis Cardinals have had over the last 100 years has been in large part thanks to Branch Rickey. 

He started it all. 

11 World Series victories and 19 National League pennants say it all. But would all of this have been possible if it weren’t for the creation of the farm system? 

We’ll never know. 

But understand this. 

Before Branch Rickey took over the Cardinals, St. Louis was a bottom-feeder of an organization. The Cardinals joined the National League in 1892 and immediately felt the impact of being a poor team in the big leagues. 

The Cardinals would have just one winning season for the remainder of the 19th Century. 

Come the 20th Century, things didn’t change much. Annual overachievement began to define the Cardinals as they averaged just 58 wins from 1900-09. They finished last in the National League three times, and two more finishes in seventh place. 

Simply put, they were a second-division team. 

Come the 1910s, a different decade, same result. 

A bunch of second division finishes except in 1914, and that was only because most of Major League Baseball’s biggest stars were lured to the Federal League with the promise of better pay. 

Don’t ask about the Federal League. It lasted just two years, and the American and National League owners were too powerful for a third league to compete and survive. 

Back to the Cardinals. 

They went back to being bad bad bad. Another last-place finish happened in 1918, and the poor Cardinals just seemed helpless. They were competing with teams in bigger and better markets like the New York Giants, Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies, and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Then here comes Branch Rickey, everything develops with the farm system, and then guess when the next time it would be that the Cardinals finished last. 

1990!!! 

Do the math. 

The Cardinals would go 72 years without finishing in last place in their division. The New York Yankees can’t even say that! 

Also, remember that playoff baseball began in 1969, so for 50 years or so, there were no divisions in baseball, just the American and National League. So, there was only a last-place finish and not two or three. 

Then once the NL is expanded and divided into an Eastern and Western division, 21 more years go by without a last-place finish. 

Astonishing. 

“Things worthwhile generally don’t just happen,” Rickey once said. “Luck is a fact but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.”  

Quite frankly, what happens to the Cardinals organization if the farm system never comes to be? If Branch Rickey hadn’t taken the initiative, and say another team started the farm system years later, what would the fortunes look like for this organization? Do the Cardinals even still play in St. Louis? 

Branch Rickey also became the man who signed Jackie Robinson with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. 

But his first brainchild was the farm system. 

The farm system continues to thrive in baseball more than 100 years after it was started. Who knows what other players lie ahead during the 2030s, the 2040s, or even the 2100s all as a result of the farm system.