As you may know, yesterday was the 59th anniversary of the day the Dodgers traded Jackie Robinson to the hated Giants. This was during the tail end of Jackie's career. He was 37-years old and nearing an end to his playing days.
After several weeks of leaving everyone in the dark, Jackie finally announced that he would hang them up. He wrote to the Giants essentially saying, "it's not you, it's me," and penned an exclusive piece for "Look" magazine for the world to see.
Contrary to legend, Jackie did not retire because he hated the Giants. Instead, he decided to leave the game on his own terms (and with a great job waiting with "Chock Full o' Nuts"). BTW, his deteriorating relationship with the Dodgers may have played a part, as well. Per a letter penned by Jackie to Dodger GM Bavasi in 1961:
The atmosphere that has existed since 1956 has been regarded by me as something a person of my temperament must expect from people who do not believe in the things I believe in, but felt an organization like yours must be pretty small if records were destroyed because of personality differences. I merely wanted to make it a complete break if this was the desire of the Dodgers organization.Ouch. Photo above via Cut4 on twitter. Below are more links to check out:
- Holy Moly! Call me a monkey's uncle. I guess the Greinke deal did happen out of nowhere. Via Ken Rosenthal at FoxSports, "How Diamondbacks landed Zack Greinke in 330 minutes."
The D-backs already had made free-agent right-hander Johnny Cueto a $120 million offer, an offer that the pitcher had rejected. They were focusing on less-expensive pitchers, on trades. But, as Hall recalls, he and Kendrick kept saying to each other, “Maybe we’re doing the wrong thing here. Should we go after Greinke?”
Sometime that morning, Kendrick finally decided that the answer was yes. He had figured out a structure of deferred payments that could make a $200 million contract work. He made the call to Hall, setting in motion a frantic, whirlwind afternoon that led to Greinke becoming the highest-paid player, by average annual value, in major-league history.
All in a matter of 5½ hours.
- Via an AP story on ESPN, "Zack Greinke hints deal for return to Dodgers was nearly agreed on."
Zack Greinke was minutes from agreeing to sign with another team when he received word the Arizona Diamondbacks were interested.
Greinke wouldn't identify the other club, but the question was about his former team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he answered with a smile, so it seems it was not hard to decipher.
- Zach Links at MLB Trade Rumors spoke with Johnny Cueto's agent and mentioned the Dodgers:
Dixon could see Cueto forming a strong rotation alongside Adam Wainwright, Michael Wacha, and Carlos Martinez, but he could also envision his client looking good in Dodger blue next to Clayton Kershaw in L.A.’s rotation. Those are just two of the fits that Dixon can see for Cueto at this stage and he’s still willing to wait for what he feels is an appropriate pact.
- Via Jim Rome at CBS Sports, "Dave Roberts on Chapman deal: ‘I don’t think that we closed the book’
“I don’t think that we closed the book on that. I know that we are excited about potentially making that trade,” Roberts told The Jim Rome Show. “And obviously, if you see Chapman on the mound and he’s dominate out there and we were going to be better for it. So obviously, with what happened, we are just kind of letting the process kind of play out and we will try to circle back if that’s the case, but obviously, we’re looking at definitely other options. I’m not going to tie ourselves to that right now, but we will kind of let things play out for sure.”
- Cary Osborne at Dodger Insider takes a look at the very first tweets by several Dodger players.
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