I had the honor of having lunch a few times with Ralph Branca. He was a co-worker of a friend of a friend. These lunches were not big affairs where he was a guest of honor or something. They were intimate, just three or four of us. Ralph would rarely talk about baseball and never about the "shot heard round the world" unless he was pressed. But one time when asked in the conversation about it he mentioned that he thought SF was stealing signs and using optics and what not to do so. But he didn't even seem that upset by it. Just kind of shrugged it off. I remember one of the first times I ate with him, he had on a tie with zoo animals on it. My friend who was with us asked him about the crazy looking tie. Ralph, and I am paraphrasing, said "what? Look there's a zebra over here, a giraffe, a lion, comon!" All the while pointing out the animals on the tie. When asked about Jackie Robinson he mentioned the obvious and well known support by Pee Wee Reese but also that he and some of his team mates supported him while others even on the Dodgers didn't want to play with him. He seem genuinely perplexed by this because he thought Jackie was a good guy and a great player. Anyway, the sign stealing thing made me think of this. He treated me, a nobody to him, as if we had been friends our whole lives. I'm guessing that is why he treated Jackie the same way. People were people to him. Pretty cool.
