THINKER'S ALMANAC: November 12

After watching the base running of Ty Cobb, what did baseball executive Branch Rickey say is the single greatest thing a person can have?

Subject: Virtue - Rickey’s “Single Greatest Thing” Speech

Event:  Branch Rickey addresses the Executive Club of Chicago, 1926

On this day in 1926, Branch Rickey gave a speech entitled “The Greatest Single Thing a Man Can Have” to the Executives Club of Chicago. Rickey is best known as the man who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Rickey was fired as the manager of the St Louis Cardinals in 1925. The owner of the team, however, recognizing Rickey’s talent for player development, offered Rickey a position as an executive for the team.  In this new position, Rickey began to invest in several minor league baseball clubs, using them to develop future talent for the Cardinals.  By doing this Rickey invented what is now a staple of Major League Baseball, the minor-league farm system.

In his speech to the Executives Club, Rickey began with an anecdote from his time as the Cardinals’ manager.  It involved an amazing feat of athleticism, not by one of his players, but by an opposing player for the Detroit Tigers, Ty Cobb.  In the play, Cobb stole two straight bases to score the winning run in extra innings.  In describing the play, Rickey expressed his amazement at Cobb’s audacity: Cobb did not rely on luck to win the game; instead, “he made his own breaks.”

                                                                                        Image by Keith Johnston from Pixabay 

The tenaciousness displayed by Cobb on the base paths and his singular desire to be the best  is what Cobb argues is the single greatest thing a ball player or any person can have:

The more that a man exercises himself and asserts his own influence over his work, the less the part that luck plays. It is true in baseball that the greatest single menace that a man has is a willingness to alibi his own failures; the greatest menace to a man’s success in business, I think, sometimes is a perfect willingness to excuse himself for his own mistakes. 

What is the greatest single thing in the character of a successful enterprise, in the character of a boy, in the character of a great baseball player? I think it is the desire to be a great baseball player, a desire that dominates him, a desire that is so strong that it does not admit of anything that runs counter to it, a desire to excel that so confines him to a single purpose that nothing else matters. (1)

Rickey’s speech joins the long philosophical tradition of asking questions about what are the most important qualities, the most important virtues that a person can have?  Similarly, his speech typifies the philosopher’s desire to break the chains of determinism and to withstand the bludgeonings of chance by mastering one’s own destiny.  As Aristotle put it:  

Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How was Branch Rickey’s speech consistent with philosophical tradition?

Challenge - Your S.G.T.:   Imagine that you have been invited to address an audience and that you have been asked to speak on the following topic:  “What is the single most important thing a person can have?”  Whether you select an abstract idea or a concrete object, make your case.

Sources:

1-Safire, William.  Lend Me Your Ears:  Great Speeches in History.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 1997: 521-523.