"The manager of the Brooklyn baseball club for 1944 will be Leo Durocher." Taylor Spink was right again.
Thirteen days before Dodger President Branch Rickey made last week's pronouncement, the editor & publisher of The Sporting News had gingerly suggested that behavior problems, not salary bickering, were separating Brooklyn's president and manager. Durocher's five-year record was good: one pennant, two seconds, two thirds. But last season the Dodgers had a player revolt, barely finished third. Lippy Leo was as flashy a figure along high-living Broadway as in Ebbets Field. Knowing Rickey's puritanism, many...
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