Sport: Giant-Sized Trouble

With the civil rights issue flaming across the U.S., the story about what Alvin Dark had said was sure to create a furor. Dark, whose talent-loaded Giants were still sputtering along in second place, one game back of the Philadelphia Phillies, sat down in San Francisco to discuss his woes with a visiting sportswriter, Stan Isaacs, columnist for Newsday, a Long Island, N.Y., daily. “We have trouble,” Isaacs quoted Dark as saying, “because we have so many Negro and Spanish-speaking ball players on this team. They are just not able to perform up to the white ball players when it comes to mental alertness. You can’t make most Negro and Spanish players have the pride in their team that you can get from white players.” Dark granted that there were exceptions such as Willie Mays, but they were just that—exceptions.

For twelve days, the column lay ticking like a time bomb. Then last week, the Giants moved into New York for a two-game series with the Mets—and Boom!—the story exploded on the sports pages of every New York paper. Rumors seethed through the National League that Giants Owner Horace Stoneham was about to fire Dark for being a racist. Before the first Mets game, 35 newsmen crowded into the visitors’ dressing room in Shea Stadium to hear Dark explain himself. “I was definitely misquoted on some things,” he said, “and other statements were deformed. If you are going to make such statements, you are either stupid or ready to quit baseball.” Newsday’s Isaacs stood by his story: “I don’t retract anything.”

An End to Pairing. Whoever was right, Alvin Dark, 42, is neither stupid nor ready to quit baseball. He is a Southerner—Oklahoma-born, Louisiana-educated—and one of the most intensely competitive men anywhere. He was a triple-threat halfback at Louisiana State, a Marine officer in World War II, an outstanding shortstop for the Giants from 1950 to 1956. As Giants manager for the last three years, he has won the National League pennant once (in 1962), finished third twice.

If he is a deep-dyed Southerner, no one has ever before accused him of letting that affect his judgment of baseball players. One of Dark’s first acts on taking over the Giants in 1961 was to end the practice of “pairing,” by which Negroes and whites were not permitted to share the same locker. He has used as many as seven Negro and Latin American players in a single game’s lineup. Negroes and Latin Americans have displaced several established players on the Giants—Negro Jim Ray Hart for Jim Davenport at third base, Puerto Rican Jose Pagán for Ed Bressoud at shortstop, Dominican Jesus Alou for Harvey Kuenn in rightfield.

The Frustrations. But Dark is also a bitter loser, who cannot abide—and cannot keep quiet about—bad base running, missed signals and halfway efforts. This year, with a team that might well have run away from the league, his frustrations have boiled over. He has clashed openly with several players—particularly Puerto Rican First Baseman Orlando Cepeda, who runs the bases as if he were treading molasses, and Negro Leftfielder Willie McCovey, who is hitting barely over .200 when Dark figures he should be batting .300.

Giant Owner Horace Stoneham seemed to recognize the reasons for Dark’s discontent, at week’s end broke his silence to give his manager a vote of confidence. The press reports, said Stoneham, were “exaggerated and distorted”; he denied all thought that a “managerial change is contemplated.” Nevertheless, Dark has a Giant-sized problem—how to keep some of his best players from thinking that he regards them as inferiors. “It is hard to put out,” said Willie McCovey, “if you think he feels that way about you.”