Alvin Dark: Dugout Disciple

When Alvin Dark took over as Oakland's manager this spring, he said he had a model for the job. It was not John McGraw, Miller Huggins, Casey Stengel, or any other successful field boss. "The past few years," announced Dark with a straight face, "I've tried to think of how Jesus Christ would handle ballplayers."

Two months into the season, the obstreperous A's think Dark is anything but a baseball messiah. "The guy's a quack," say some players. His managerial style is unquestionably unusual. If a player ignores his directions, Dark merely contemplates the dugout's top step. When the team fails to hustle, he does not say a word. Even more disturbing to the team, Dark seems to possess a reverse Midas touch with the pitching staff. He yanks effective throwers too soon, often leaves struggling ones on the mound too long.

What irritates the players most is Dark's willing--even eager--subservience to Owner Charles Finley. Early this season when Dark decided to drop the slumping Deron Johnson as designated hitter, Finley called before the game to order otherwise. Dark acknowledges that his reply was, "You're right, Charlie." Last week Johnson was still slumping, hitting. 176.

To the charge of ineptitude and uninspired leadership, Dark replies: "It's not an easy job to take over a World Championship team. People expect you never to lose a game. I'm still learning about the personnel on this team, particularly the pitching staff." About Finley, though, he offers no excuse. "If Mr. Finley says this will be done," explains Dark, "it will be done. The Bible teaches you to listen to your boss."

Invoking Scripture is common practice these days for the deeply religious Baptist. "I am a poor sinner and nothing at all," he likes to say, "but Jesus Christ is my all and all." When players criticize him behind his back, Dark's reaction is: "Great peace have they which love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them."

Alvin Dark, 52, was not always so ready to turn the other cheek. In a distinguished major league career that spanned 14 years as third baseman and shortstop for six teams, including two seasons as captain of the pennant-winning New York Giants, he was one of the most aggressive players in the game. When he became manager of the San Francisco Giants in 1961 he quickly earned a reputation as a first-class thrower of chairs and pounder of tables.

Four years after taking over the Giants, Dark was fired. Temper tantrums were not the reason. Alleged racism and self-confessed philandering were the cause of his downfall. The racism charge resulted from a newspaper interview in which Dark seemed to be saying that his black and Latino players were "dumb." Dark claimed that he had been misquoted. He seemed to be riding out that storm when the Giant front office discovered that he was openly having an affair with an airline stewardess. In those days, baseball people, like the heroes of old-fashioned westerns, were supposed to be paragons of virtue--at least in public. Dark was soon dismissed. After he was divorced from his wife, he married the stewardess.

The man who rescued Dark from oblivion was none other than Charles O. Finley. The first managerial stint for Finley lasted a year and a half before Dark was ousted for insubordination--he incensed Finley by refusing to fire a player for using obscenities in public that Dark had not overheard. From Kansas City, he went to Cleveland where he was once again dismissed. Among the reasons: poor press relations and an even poorer won-lost record.

After the third dismissal, Dark dropped from sight for 2 1/2 years and immersed himself in the Bible. When he came back to the ballpark last winter to accept the Oakland job, all his old fire seemed to be gone. The man who once overturned a buffet table in anger at a player, spraying the clubhouse with hot dogs and mustard, now says that managing is "all a feeling of love." Whether he can test that theory until October is uncertain. Both Finley and the players obviously read Bibles different from Dark's.

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