Alvin Dark obit

Alvin Dark, Giants captain, shortstop and manager whose career was dogged by racial comments, dead at age 92 

 

He was not on the list.

Alvin Dark, the captain/shortstop on the 1954 world champion Giants who managed them to the 1962 pennant in San Francisco but then was dogged the rest of his career by charges of bigotry toward blacks and Hispanics, died Thursday at his home in Easley, S.C. Dark, who was 92, had suffered from Alzheimers Disease.

A three-sport star at LSU in the early '40s who spurned the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles to sign a $50,000 bonus with the old Boston Braves in 1946, the Oklahoma-born Dark played for 14 years in the majors, 6 1/2 of them with the Giants in New York, compiling a .289 average, 2,089 hits and 1,064 runs.

In '54, he was the spark plug on the Giants' world championship team, playing every game and batting .293 with 20 homers, 98 runs scored and 70 RBI. Then, in the Giants' four-game sweep of the heavily favored Cleveland Indians in the World Series, he batted .412. He batted .417 in the '51 World Series, which the Giants lost to the Yankees in six games. Dark was a three-time National League All-Star shortstop with three straight .300 seasons in '51-'53 for the Giants, who traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals at the June 15 deadline in 1956 in a nine-player deal that brought future Hall of Fame second baseman Red Schoendienst to the Polo Grounds.

Dark's best year was 1951, when he hit .303 with 114 runs scored and a league-leading 41 doubles. The Giants had acquired Dark, along with shortstop Eddie Stanky, from the Braves the previous winter, and during the '51 season, manager Leo Durocher named him team captain. As good a player as Dark was, however, it was as a manager for four teams, including two terms with volatile Charlie Finley, owner of the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics, during which he became one of the most controversial figures in the game.

After retiring as a player in 1960, Dark was immediately hired by his old boss, Giants owner Horace Stoneham, to manage the team. Two years later, the Giants won the National League pennant, defeating the Dodgers in a three-game playoff, but lost in seven games to the Yankees in the World Series. It appeared as if Dark was off to a managing career to rival his mentor, Durocher. But in a July 1964 interview with Newsday columnist Stan Isaacs, Dark was quoted as saying the Giants were having trouble "because we have so many Negro and Spanish-speaking players on the team. They are just not able to perform up to the white player when it comes to mental alertness. You can't make most Negro and Spanish players have the pride in their team that you get from the white players."

Besieged with cries of "racist" and calls from the media for his dismissal as Giants manager, Dark attempted to defend himself by insisting he'd been misquoted on some things and that "other statements were deformed." He went on to say, "if you're going to make such statements, you're either stupid or ready to quit baseball." Somehow, the firestorm passed, and Dark was not fired by Stoneham — at least not immediately. Rather, it was when the Giants owner learned the Bible-quoting Dark, a devout Christian who was married with four children, was having an affair with an airline stewardess, Jackie Rockwood (whom he would later marry), he fired him after the '64 season.

In July of 1965, Dark was hired by Finley as a special assistant for the then-Kansas City A's, and in 1966, was made manager. His first tenure with Finley ended in August of '67 after the cantankerous owner created a player revolt by fining and indefinitely suspending pitcher Lew Krausse for rowdy behavior on a team flight and releasing power-hitting first baseman Ken Harrelson, whom he called a "menace to baseball."

When Dark refused Finley's order to defend him, he was fired. As a prime example of Finley's mercurial manner, he hired Dark a second time as manager, this time in 1974, to replace Dick Williams, who had just won back-to-back world championships for the A's in Oakland. Under Dark's leadership, the A's made it three world championships in a row, but after winning 98 games the following year — despite having lost his ace pitcher, Catfish Hunter, to free agency over a breach of contract by Finley — Dark was fired again. Though Finley never specified his reasons for this firing, it was strongly suspected the owner was miffed at Dark for having been quoted as saying at Redwood Chapel Community Church in Castro Valley, Calif. that "if (Finley) doesn't accept Jesus Christ as his savior, he's going to hell."

"I simply believe that Dark's outside (church) activities interfered with his managing of the club," Finley said. After his second A's term, Dark, who also managed the Cleveland Indians from 1969-71, had one last managing job, with the San Diego Padres in 1977. But in the earliest manager firing in history, he was dismissed in the middle of spring training, March 21, 1978 in the aftermath of another player revolt — this one aimed at him with charges of over-managing, not delegating enough authority to his coaches, banning beer on team flights and instituting bible-study classes.

Though the racially insensitive quotes attributed to him by Isaacs will always be the center point of Dark's baseball legacy, Willie Mays, for one, hailed him as a good teammate and manager "who taught me more about baseball than anyone."

"It's a sad day for me with all the help he gave me," Mays told the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday. "He was such a mentor to me. A very nice man."

Jackie Robinson once said: "I have known Alvin Dark for many years and I have found him to be a gentleman and, above all, unbiased."

But in his 1980 autobiography, "When in Doubt, Fire the Manager," Dark conceded: "There aren't enough words to heal the wound. Every stop I made in baseball thereafter was cause for somebody with a scalpel of interrogation to open it again. I suppose when I die, it'll be included in my obituary."

Dark is survived by his wife, Jackie, four children and two step-children.

As player

 

    Boston Braves (1946, 1948–1949)

    New York Giants (1950–1956)

    St. Louis Cardinals (1956–1958)

    Chicago Cubs (1958–1959)

    Philadelphia Phillies (1960)

    Milwaukee Braves (1960)

 

As manager

 

    San Francisco Giants (1961–1964)

    Kansas City Athletics (1966–1967)

    Cleveland Indians (1968–1971)

    Oakland Athletics (1974–1975)

    San Diego Padres (1977)

 

Career highlights and awards

 

    3× All-Star (1951, 1952, 1954)

    2× World Series champion (1954, 1974)

    Rookie of the Year (1948)