The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-03-01
BY HARRY CRIMSON CnON.fs E1ffOP NEA Gerviae

Sports Editor, NEA Service With Branch Hickey it always was question of money-was un- til comparatively recent years. After deciding to chuck baseball for law following the season of 1908, due to failing health and the insecurity of his future, Hickey encountered an even greater obsta- cle than a shortage of funds, how ever.
 Playing baseball all summer and football in the fall, teaching and coaching, and studying nights were too much even for young fellow with a farm-toughened physique. Rickey's health failed completely. His weight dropped from 175 pounds to 145. He was forced to lie on his back for months at Sara mac Lake.
 Ball players salaries were not what they are today during Rick ey's brief career as combatant. The man who cultivated the exten- sive farm system of the St. Louis Cardinals married Jane Moulton, his sweetheart of grammar school days, in 1906. Even though he helu the side job of athletic director and football coach and participated in professional football, after his siege of sickness, he was none too well fixed financially for three nonrev- enue years as law student. So despite his precarious state of health, the ambitious Hickey re- solved to complete three-year course at the University of Michi- gan in two, and to make both ends meet by coaching the baseball team.
 Coached Sisler and Lavan
 When spring rolled around, Hickey applied for the coaching position. Phil Bartleme, now B. R. .'s. chief aid in St. Louis, was di- rector of athletics at Ann Arbor. Bartleme did not recognize Hickey as a former major league player. and demanded testimonials.
 How I hustled for that job" beams Hickey. T wrote the late Garry Hermann, Clark Griffith and Jimmy McAleer, who man. aged the Browns, and everybody of any standing in the game, as wei l as lawyers, judge, doctors an even a bishop. I timed these so the replies would flow into Bartleme one by one over period of about two weeks"
 Hickey finished his law cource in two wears, bue continued as baseball coach of the Wolverines for two more.
 Two of his pupils were the im- mortal George Harold Sisler and Johnyy Lavan, splendid short stop and now a physician in St. Louis, both of whom la CT played with the Browns under Hickey.
 While Hickey had not the slightest intention of returning to professional baseball at the time his first peek at Sisler gave him abig idea. The light dawned on Connie Mack about the same time. While there were a few college men in professional base- ball-Christy Mathewson, Eddie Plank, Jack Coombs among them the campuses had been sorely neglected by scouts.
 From Sisler and Lavan to young Burgess Whitehead, the University of North Carolina boy who is being groomed to replace the aging Frankie Frisch at sec- ond base for the world champions, the rosters of the Browns and Cardinals show how well Rickkeyy has capitalized on the idea that struck him the first afternoon that he saw the grocefuul Sisler hit, run throw and field.
 hell
 Hickey, educated in the old rough and ready baseball school, dreamed of an entire club of col lege men-athletes who would listen and who would be capable of carrying out his theories.
 Idaho Gets Young Lawyer
 Hickey was graduated from Michigan with the degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1911. and decided to keep his health and make his fortune in the west.
 He hung his shingle at Boise,