As a manager, Bragan earned a reputation for "color-blindedness." When he was the skipper of the Dodgers' Triple-A Spokane Indians PCL farm club in , he played a pivotal role in helping Maury Wills, a speedy African-American shortstop, rise to Major League stardom. Wills' baseball career had stalled in the Dodgers' farm system until he learned to switch hit under Bragan. Said the Dodgers' then-general manager, Buzzie Bavasi, "Bobby would call six times a day and tell me over again how Wills had learned to switch-hit and how he was a great team leader, off and on the field, and how I was absolutely nuts if I didn't bring him up right away." After batting .313 in 48 games with Spokane in 1959, Wills was promoted to the Dodgers in June and proceeded to win the regular shortstop job. He would fashion a 14-year MLB career, play on three world champions, make seven NL All-Star teams, and in win the National League Most Valuable Player Award and set a new record for stolen bases in a season, with 104 thefts, breaking Ty Cobb's 47-year-old mark. In his 1976 memoir The Lords of Baseball, longtime Dodger executive Harold Parrott would claim that Bragan's hiring by the Braves in 1963 was orchestrated by Rickey to thwart a plan by Dodger owner Walter O'Malley to replace his manager, eventual Hall of Famer Walter Alston, with Leo Durocher. Alston had come under withering criticism for failing to win the National League pennant but O'Malley decided he would make the move on hiring Durocher only if he could find a suitable "soft landing spot" for Alston, who had managed his club for nine seasons and, to that point, had won three NL flags and two World Series titles. The owner chose Milwaukee, fading as contenders and with a managerial vacancy to fill, as Alston's ideal destination. According to Parrott's memoir, Rickey—then in semi-retirement but still O'Malley's bitter enemy—discovered the scheme and brokered the marriage between Bragan and the Braves' ownership before O'Malley's plan could materialize. Alston kept his job in Los Angeles and led the 1963 Dodgers to the world championship for his third Series triumph; he would remain at the Dodger helm through 1976, win three additional pennants and, in 1965, his fourth and final world title. President of Texas League and National Association In 1969, Bragan, a Fort Worth resident, began a new