Branch Rickey’s Residual Legacy | The National Pastime Museum

Throughout baseball history, general managers have tended to leave positions because they were removed or forced out, and that tended to happen because their teams were bad. The result was a low, and often even negative, residual value confronting the incoming administration.
That was never Branch Rickey’s way. In fact, Rickey’s most overlooked legacy to the franchises he operated was a booming residual value of talent upon which a succeeding administration could fashion ongoing success. This trait flowed from his remarkable judgment. “He could recognize a great player from the window of a moving train,” sportswriter Jim Murray once wrote of Rickey.