[When you managed Montreal, did you work with Dodgers during spring training?]

CLYDE SUKEFORTH: Well, no. We didn't all go to the same...Now they'll have the Triple-A clubs and the major league clubs probably in the same facility, but we went to Florida and we could be independent of the parent club. They might send players back and forth, we'd all be in Florida.

[How did your Montreal teams do?]

Pretty good. We were in the Little World Series one year, but Columbus beat us, four games to one.

[Who were they a farm club of?]

The Cardinals. Barney [Burt] Shotton was the manager. They had fine pitching.

[Who was on your Montreal club?]

Well, that was '41, 1941. We had Dixie Howell and we had Clyde Corbett [?], ??????, Jake Powell, Jack Graham, George Stahl[?]. Pitchers we had Kent Wicker, we had Tex Carlton. We had all old ballplayers going down, I mean, going the wrong way. MacPhail got them all, all the bad guys in baseball, because you get them for half price. We had 'em all. Except [Boots?] Poffenberger. They got him, but he wouldn't report...

[You managed Montreal '40, '41, '42, and then in '43...]

I went back with the Dodgers, so that I actually worked for the Dodgers, or I was controlled by them, they had my contract, from '32 to '52, and that's when the New York press picked it up, after they got some criticism because I sent in the wrong pitcher, tried to send in [Carl] Erskine and they hit one off him. It would have been the same thing, but then, after that blew over, the press turned around the other way and they said that for one pitch Clyde Sukeforth, the oldest man in the Brooklyn organization, over twenty years, lost his job. One pitch. Well, Hal Parrott [?] told me in the first place, Hal Parrott, the World secretary, he was a newspaper man himself. He was a good friend of mine, he used to come up here on the farm. He said that they were thinking of asking me to take over the Montreal club, I mean the St. Paul club [also a AAA team]. But I had followed Rickey early [?] and Rickey was over in Pittsburgh and I had an idea that I could possibly get a job with him.

[You thought you could get a job with Mr. Rickey?]

Yeah. I wrote to him and told him that if he could use me I'd be very happy to come over with him. He called me right back and said, "Get your release." Of course, he couldn't negotiate with me in good faith, anyway, if I'm still under contract. Well, then, after the New York press got on them, that the oldest man in service in the Brooklyn organization was fired for one pitch, that baseball was a pretty hazardous business. That was the point. So everybody called, even Walter O'Malley, he told me, and he said, "We want you back. We really do." And I said, "Walter, you don't want me and I don't want to come back." He said the press is giving us a bad time. I said, "I'll tell you what you do. You send me my release and you dictate the statement and I'll give it to you. You dictate it." Well, he didn't dictate a statement. He just didn't make any statement, I guess.

[He just gave you the release?]

Yeah.

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