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One year, the Naval Academy asked Rickey to lend them a ballplayer as advisory coach. Rickey decided to chance it with Leo. He laid down laws for Durocher's behavior at Annapolis: 1) no profanity before the middies; 2) no chasing around with women; 3) no card-playing with Academy officers; 4) take no pay. Leo, who knows how to behave when he has to, brushed elbows with Academy brass and picked up little bits of polish. His photographic mind* absorbed some fringes of etiquette.
He did well, but it was no lasting conversion. In St. Louis, the Central Trades and Labor Union voted to boycott Cardinal ballgames because The Lip had reportedly popped off with anti-union talk. Says Rickey: "I have times of great quandary. Whenever I get him to the point where he's giving a bucket of milk, I tell myself I'll get this one to the creamery. Then bang! he kicks it over and it never gets there. He has an amazingly fertile talent for making a difficult situation immediately worse."
This season Leo Durocher cannot afford to be immediately worse. After the bad Leo & Laraine publicity, one sports columnist predicted that by July 1 Durocher would no longer be managing the Dodgers. But Branch Rickey summoned a press conference, glowered: "I am a Durocher man." Never needlessly sentimental, Branch Rickey is for Durocher because he expects Durocher to bring home a pennant.
Privately, Rickey laid down the law to Leo. In spring training at Havana, Leo the Leopard has been changing his spots. No dice rolled off his fingertips. When one of his old nodding acquaintances, a Brooklyn gambler, came up to chat friendly like in the dining room of Havana's plush Hotel Nacional, Leo gave him a brief and explicit greeting. "Go away," said Leo. Durocher gave up smoking, even joined the Book-of-the-Month Club.
After the Ifs. Whether Durocher's Dodgers can beat the Cardinals (or even finish in the first division) is a question strewn with ifs. They have the pitching. If Pete Reiser's lame shoulder mends, and if Carl Furillo and Bruce Edwards are as good as they were last year, and if Veteran Dixie Walker comes through, they will have hitting. First-base problem will not be settled until Rickey decides whether to let Jackie Robinson become the first Negro in the big-leagues.
The rest will be up to Leo Ernest Durocher. Shrewd old Branch Rickey did not seem to be worried, even by the baneful influence of Love. Said he last week: "Leo is acting like a high-school boy . . . but it'll be all right."
* Brooklynese for squabble.
* Once he won $10 from a doubting newsman who didn't believe Durocher could recall every play of a doubleheader in Philadelphia.