The Brooklyn Eagle
Friday December 7th, 1945
By Percy Pringle Sr.
New Man in Charge of Kings is a Familiar Name
My first week here covering the Kings and a lot of change is going on. The Kings have hired former Detroit and Cleveland GM DD Martin to take the reigns of the Kings franchise. Team Owner Daniel Prescott (64) sounded enthused for the first time in several years as he announced the hiring of his new GM. Prescott "It's with great pleasure that I announce the hiring of DD Martin as GM of the Brooklyn Kings. DD will have my full support in helping him guide us back to where we belong, at the top of the CA!."
Martin who earlier in the week was fired or simply just walked away from the Detroit Dynamo's GM post appeared to be in good spirits as he addressed the media. Martin stated "First I want to thank Mr. Prescott on this great opportunity here in Brooklyn. This is a great organization and our intention will be to bring the winning tradition back to King's baseball. Unlike when I went to Detroit in 1935, there is a tremendous amount of young talent here in this organization. Our first responsibility here is to get our new Manager Tom Barrell the best coaching and support staff we can. Tom was a Hall of Fame Pitcher and I might even try to coax him out of retirement as we might need a veteran arm and he sure does seem like he can still fire pitches past FABL pitchers. But we will get Tom the best staff we can and then turn our attention to hiring managers and coaches to our affiliated clubs. We have a lot of players that are returning from the war and have almost 250 players in our organization. We are going to have to sit down, and have a serious talk about the players in our system and unfortunately make some decisions. Most organizations run with around 170 players and we haven't even gotten to the draft yet. We will make those decisions and prepare to be very active in the Rule 5 draft and be very prepared for the Amateur Draft next month. Thankfully we have a very good talent Director of Scouting here in Brooklyn and John Spears and I are going to get to know each other very well over the next month plus.""
So the Kings are going to be led by the fiery Martin who loves to make trades. Can he trade Brooklyn into contention this year? That remains to be seen, but when I asked the GM about that possibility he stated, " We will make deals that we feel are in the best long term interests of the Kings. We are not looking for rental players that will just get us competitive for a few seasons, we are looking to build something here that will bring Brooklyn a championship and also perhaps a new stadium along with it someday."
So what I am sure will be a very busy month for the new GM starts right away. It will be fun to see where the Kings go.