McGee: Effa Manley, pressing and passing after a fashion
From SABR member Bob McGee at The National Pastime Museum on February 18, 2016:
It was the day before V-E Day, when the throngs would fill Times Square, but on this occasion, arguably Effa Manley’s finest hour, the crowd consisted of the usual cast at a Branch Rickey press conference, notably the scribes who were oft subject to his lengthy discourses in the office domiciled on Montague Street in Brooklyn that the reporters themselves would dub “Cave of the Winds.”
On this occasion Effa Manley decided to crash a party, and stand up to power. And there was nothing unusual about that.
Rickey had been ripping the Negro American and Negro National Leagues, criticizing them for their lack of contracts and ersatz schedules, characterizing them as “organizations in the zone of a racket,” a cantilevered phrase bordering on slander. The show he was putting on had to do with his launch of the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers in the United States League (USL), founded the previous December.
Read the full article here: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/effa-manley-pressing-and-passing-after-fashion
Originally published: February 18, 2016. Last Updated: February 18, 2016.