Why Jackie Robinson was an even better baseball player than you realize

The meeting that took place in Branch Rickey's office on Montague Street in Brooklyn in late August of 1945 has obtained an almost apocryphal status. Dodgers scout Clyde Sukeforth had met up with Jackie Robinson in Toledo, and the two traveled together to New York to meet the Dodgers' general manager. Sukeforth ushered Robinson into Rickey's office and warned his boss that he had not had a chance to see Robinson throw from the shortstop hole, as Rickey had requested, because Robinson had been nursing a sore shoulder.

Rickey and Robinson sized each other up. A long minute of silence passed. "When Rickey met somebody he was interested in, he studied them in the most profound way," Sukeforth…