WALDOBORO – Clyde Sukeforth, who died Sunday, was praised Tuesday by a former major leaguer the Maine native helped into major league baseball.
Sukeforth was a Brooklyn Dodgers scout who helped bring Jackie Robinson and Don Newcombe to the major leagues.
Sukeforth, a major league catcher before becoming a scout for the Dodgers, died at home here at age 98.
Sukeforth had been the oldest living former Dodgers player and was a confidante of Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, who sent him to Chicago in 1945 to watch a Negro leagues game involving Robinson’s Kansas City Monarchs.
Robinson sat out the game, but Sukeforth was impressed enough to arrange the historic meeting with Rickey. Two years later Robinson broke the color barrier in the majors.
“What Clyde Sukeforth brought to baseball was a philosophy that anybody should be given a chance to play baseball if they had the ability – regardless of their color,” said Newcombe, who was a 19-year-old pitcher with the Newark Eagles of the Negro leagues when he first met Sukeforth in 1945.
Newcombe started that day, an exhibition game between black All-Stars and white All-Stars, but hurt his arm in the third inning and retreated to the clubhouse, where Sukeforth found him crying.
“I’ll always remember a little small man with a big hat on, walking through that door,” said Newcombe, currently the Dodgers’ director of community relations. “He said, `I’d like you to meet Branch Rickey tomorrow morning in the Dodger offices.’ I didn’t even know who Branch Rickey was.”
The next day, Rickey handed Newcombe $1,000 in cash as a bonus before signing him to a contract to play for the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers.
A month later, Rickey made his historic signing of Robinson to a contract with the Montreal Royals. Newcombe was promoted to the Dodgers two years after Robinson – becoming the NL’s first Rookie of the Year.
Sukeforth was acting manager for the Dodgers, filling in for the suspended Leo Durocher, on April 15, 1947, the day of Robinson’s major league debut. Brooklyn defeated the Boston Braves 5-3.
“Clyde was just what you would expect out of somebody from Maine. He was a very crisp, honest Yankee,” said Vin Scully, who has broadcast Dodgers games since 1950. “Clyde might not say very much at all, but he was a great baseball man. He was not the kind of a man you partied with, but the players loved him. Everybody called him `Sukey.’ He had great strength as a person, and it was pervasive throughout the team.”
Sukeforth began playing in the majors in 1926 with Cincinnati. He hit .354 for the Reds in 1929 before an eye injury in a hunting accident two years later hampered his hitting for the rest of his career. His lifetime batting average was .264.
Sukeforth served as a Dodgers scout from 1936-51. He later scouted for the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Atlanta Braves. Among the players he signed was Roberto Clemente.
A native of the town of Washington in midcoast Maine, Sukeforth graduated from Coburn Classical Institute and attended Georgetown University.
Sukeforth’s first wife, Helen, died in 1938. His second wife, Grethel, died last year.
Survivors include his daughter, Helen Zimmerman, of Dallas, and four grandchildren.
At Sukeforth’s request, no services were planned.
Ray Hayworth, 96, becomes the oldest living former Dodgers player.
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