The Boys of Summer

To the Editor:

I am always glad when Branch Rickey’s contribution to the modern civil rights movement is acknowledged, as in David Oshinsky’s review of Jimmy Breslin’s book about Rickey (“A Whole New Ball Game,” March 27). But Oshinsky seriously misleads readers when he suggests that Rickey integrated the Dodgers because “its farm system was unable to provide.” Rickey’s triumph in Brooklyn consisted of having the courage to racially integrate the team and to develop a farm system that would surpass his achievement with the St. Louis Cardinals. During World War II, Rickey signed such teenagers as Ralph Branca, Carl Erskine, Gil Hodges and Duke Snider.

After the war and some minor league apprenticeship, they blossomed together, black and white, to become the immortal “Boys of Summer.” They all profited from their minor league experience, so it is off the mark for Oshinsky to quote approvingly Breslin’s description of the farm system “as modeled somewhat after the Southern system of slavery.”

LEE LOWENFISH
New York
The writer is the author of the biography “Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman.”