Lafayette Fresco Thompson, Father of the Dodgers Modern Farm System

Some of you posters on here are too young to remember Fresco Thompson, but those of us who were brought up with the Dodgers of the 19’50s and 1960s were treated to his handiwork for many years. And so were some fans in the ’70s. When he died of cancer in late 1968, his last draft class would make a huge impact on Dodger teams for the next decade and beyond.

Lafayette Fresco Thompson was born in Centreville, Alabama on June 6, 1902. His father, Lafayette Sr. was named by his paternal grandmother. She found the name Fresco in a Scottish novel she had read. His father worked his way up and eventually became an executive with the JC Penny stores. They lived in Chicago for a while, then in 1916, they moved to New York City.

Thompson went to school at George Washington high and he was captain of the New York City baseball champions. He then went to Columbia University in NY to play baseball and football. A 5’6″ quarterback on the football team, he was dwarfed by the team’s fullback, 6’2″ 200 plus Lou Gehrig. Thompson really was not interested in school, as he had his eye set on playing pro baseball, and he flunked out before he could join Gehrig on the baseball field. No pro scout was interested in signing him. So he wrote letters and finally got a response from a Class-D league team in Grand Island Nebraska.

They offered him a job if he paid his own bus fare. So in 1923, he joined them as their second baseman. In 1925 he got his first taste of the majors when he was called up to the Pirates in September. They sent him back to the minors after the season. In September 1926, he was brought up by the Giants for a short time, and despite going 5-8, John McGraw traded him to Philadelphia that winter.

Thompson, who was getting recognized as quite the witty fellow said ” Well, the guy they replaced me with was no slouch.” His replacement? Rogers Hornsby. The next 4 years in Philadelphia with the Phil’s he would describe as 4 years of living death. Their home park, Baker Field, was considered a comical excuse for a baseball park. The RF wall was 279 feet away. The park made Chuck Klein a Hall of Famer, and Thompson a .300 hitter. Burt Shotton, the Phillie skipper, who would have his own place in Dodger history later, named him captain. He was the team’s holler guy. Once a teammate saw him gargling with mouthwash and explained he was just getting in shape for the game.

As captain of the team, he would deliver the lineup to the plate prior to the game. Once he presented umpire Bill Klem a lineup and it showed P. Willoughby and others. Klem accused him of making a travesty of the game, Thompson replied, not me, but our pitchers are. Thompson himself was not much help to the Phillie hurlers, finishing 1st or 2nd in errors his entire 4 years with the Phil’s.

After the 1930 season, where the Phil’s lost 102 games despite a team BA of .302, he was traded to Brooklyn along with Lefty O’Doul. That spring he was given a locker next to slugger Babe Herman. Herman complained, ” What’s the idea of me dressing next to a .250 hitter”.?Thompson replied, “How do you think I feel dressing next to a .250 fielder?

One writer for the Brooklyn Eagle said the new 2nd baseman would liven up the Brooklyn infield. Thompson never got the chance. Wilbert Robinson, the manager hated the trade because it cost one of his favorite pitchers, Jumbo Elliot, and saddled him with the excellent hitting, but lead gloved O’Doul. That gave him two real defensive liabilities in the outfield, Herman and O’Doul. It was said at the time that CF Jimmy Fredrick would need a motorcycle to cover the ground they could not.

Resigned to the bench most of the time, Robbie played holdover 2nd baseman, Neal Finn most of the time. After the 1931 season ended, Thompson started his tour of the high minors. In 1938 he began managing and made many stops until towards the end of WWII, he was hired as an assistant to Dodger farm director, Branch Rickey Jr, and doubled as a troubleshooter and scout for Rickey Sr.

He would later say that he had a concentrated baseball education at the tutelage of a master. In 1950, Walter O’Malley bought Rickey out and took control of the team. A lot of his brain trust in the front office went with him to Pittsburgh. But Thompson and Buzzie Bavasi stayed. Most papers thought that O’Malley would name Thompson the GM, but what Walter did was give Bavasi control of the two AAA teams and the parent club roster, and he gave Thompson control of the other two dozen Dodger farm teams and scouting. They were both executive VP’s, but neither held the GM title.

The message was clear, O’Malley was the final word on everything. Walt set a budget and trusted his VP’s to stay within the guidelines and oversee all baseball matters. And to his credit, O’Malley listened to both of them and sometimes took their advice. He listened and heeded Bavasi’s suggestion that he hire an unknown to manage the team after they cut ties with Charlie Dressen in 1953, so Walter Alston took over the job in 1954.

All of them worked on 1-year contracts. O’Malley was pretty cheap when it came to paying, but he offered a pension plan, and profit-sharing to members of the front office, a practice which at that time was unheard of in baseball. On Thompson’s watch, the Dodgers had more ROY’s than any other organization in baseball, FIVE. Joe Black, Jim Gilliam, Frank Howard, Jim Lefebvre, and Ted Sizemore.

His scouts found Koufax, Drysdale and Sutton, Hall of Famers all. As I stated earlier, he was well known for his wit, he said of Willie Davis that he was so fast he could beat out a pop fly. When a young player complained he was hitting just under the ball, Thompson suggested putting lifts in his shoes. A mediocre player himself, he became a huge hit on the banquet circuit. His wife had a great sense of humor too, when an advertisement in a local paper said that he agreed to speak, she commented, “Agrees to Speak? That’s the greatest understatement I have ever heard“.

He was with Rickey who was complaining because, with the war, it was impossible to get a new car with everyone making tanks and planes, Rickey said he wanted to get a new Ford. Thompson replied I want a Cadillac. Rickey asked, how can you afford a Cadillac on your salary? Thompson replied, “If I have to go without a car, I would rather it be a Cadillac rather than a Ford. “

Many thought he would go with Rickey to the Pirates, but he stayed. It was said then that all the Protestants went to Pittsburgh and the Catholics stayed in Brooklyn. There was also at the time, a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment in the borough of Brooklyn, and it was one of the underlying reasons that the Dodgers eventually moved to Los Angeles. But that is a tale for another time.

The Boys of Summer were Rickey’s team. In the winter of 1957, baseball got rid of the bonus rule, the rule that made the Dodgers keep Koufax on the roster for two years, and was responsible for them losing Roberto Clemente in the Rule 5 draft in 1954. Thompson and Bavasi convinced O’Malley to open his wallet, and over the next 2 years, they signed more than 100 players, including Ron Fairly, Willie Davis, and Frank Howard.

During the Rickey years, they looked for certain skills in players, and if they did not see them they passed. Mays, Banks, Rizzuto, Greenburg, and Whitey Ford were deemed lacking in some ways, so you can see the system was not perfect. Later Thompson felt that a player needed at least 4 years in the minors, but the Dodgers did not always adhere to that, with the likes of Tommy Davis, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton, and Willie Davis earning promotions to the bigs before 4 years with the system. I

n the 50s and early 60’s with Reese and then Wills holding down the SS position, former Dodgers SS’s were spread around the league, Chico Carrasquel, Chico Fernandez, Bob Lillis, Bobby Morgan, Don Zimmer. and Billy Hunter. The system was also the breeding ground for some managers, Gene Mauch, Gil Hodges, Don Zimmer, Sparky Anderson, and Dick Williams. Roger Craig would later join that list.

Thompson and Bavasi, thinking Dodger Stadium would be ready by 1960 had begun to build the team based on pitching and speed, but playing the coliseum, that total overhaul would have to wait. Craig, Wills, and Sherry, 3 who were not rated very high were key contributors to the 59 Championship team, and so the rebuild began. By the time they moved into Dodger Stadium in 1962, about the only holdover from Rickey’s leadership was Duke Snider.

Gilliam was still there, but he was part of Thompson’s watch. By 1963 the Dodgers farm system had shrunk from 24 to 8. The Rickey mantra of quality out of quantity was no longer valid, and with all the reduced roster spots it was not possible for him to keep players in the system as they had done previously. Maury Wills, who had spent 8 years in the minors, or Roger Craig who was trying to come back from a sore arm would have not been kept.

Thompson also believed the new generation of players were not willing to spend long years of service in the minor leagues. He felt they would move on if they did not move up fast enough. Like many others of his time, he also did not think the new guys were as tough as the old ones. He said that a bad case of dandruff would put a player on the shelf for several days. Bavasi and Thompson worked together for 18 years in apparent harmony.

That ended in 1968 when Bavasi was granted permission to become part owner and GM of the expansion San Diego Padres. Thompson, at the age of 66 was named GM. 3 months later he became ill with cancer. He underwent 3 operations, one to remove a kidney. He died on November 20, 1968.

But his imprint would remain for years. He was succeeded by Al Campanis, another Rickey hire who would run the team for the next 19 years. There would be 15 players from the last draft he supervised who would later play in the major leagues. Bobby Valentine, Steve Garvey, Bill Buckner, Davey Lopes, Sandy Vance, Ron Cey, Joe Ferguson, Mike Pazik, Geoff Zahn, Tom Paciorek, Bob Randall, Ed Crosby, Doyle Alexander, Bob Gallagher, Ed Ott, and Bob Sheldon. Of those, Lopes and Valentine have had stints as managers in the majors. Thompson was a vital part of building the image of the Dodgers in Los Angeles.