Athlete (1943-44)( 1947-48) Alvin Dark

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Alvin Dark always in midst of history

Managed Giants, A’s in World Series

If you want to know baseball history, it’s buried in a sand trap at Easley, S.C.’s Smithfields Country Club.

Hunched over his sand wedge 80 years young is Alvin Dark, and he’s seen it all.

The "shot heard ‘round the world?" He was in the victor’s dugout.

Willie Mays’ basket catch? He was watching from shortstop.

Warren Spahn, Stan Musial, and Ernie Banks -- he played with them. He’s seen five decades of the pastime’s finest, and has the stories to prove it. He is baseball’s Forrest Gump.

"Sometimes, I sit down and start thinking about it," Dark said. "God has put me with legends; names that mean a lot in the game of baseball."

But the kid from Lake Charles made quite a name for himself, too.

Dark’s father, who worked for Magnolia Oil, moved the family to Louisiana when Alvin was 11. Rarely seen without a ball, Dark dreamed of being a professional baseball player. LSU gave him an avenue. In 1941, a few months before the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Dark went to Baton Rouge and joined the football, basketball and baseball teams. After his sophomore year, he joined the Marine Corps.

Baseball was his best sport, and he joined the Boston Braves when he was discharged in July 1946. He traveled to Pittsburgh to meet up with the team, but was perplexed when he couldn’t find his locker in the lockerroom.

Then, in the corner, he spotted a rusty nail sticking out of the wall, "Dark" written above it. Right next to it was a nail for another youngster, which above it read "Spahn."

Sometimes, when they’re reunited at memorabilia shows, Dark will joke with the Hall of Famer: "I remember you, buddy. You didn’t even have a locker!"

In 1947, Sphan’s led the league with a 2.33 ERA, and Dark was sent down to the minor leagues. Playing for Boston’s affiliate, the Milwaukee Brewers, he won Rookie of the Year. In 1948 he won Rookie of the Year again, this time in the big leagues. Dark hit .322 with 39 doubles, three homers and 48 RBIs.

"The Swamp Fox," as he was affectionately nicknamed, played 14 seasons with the Braves, New York Giants, Cardinals, Cubs and Phillies. He was a career .289 hitter, and a .323 hitter in three World Series: 1948 with Boston and 1951 and 1954 with New York.

"I’ve been very fortunate," Dark said. "I’ve had a good time being in sports."

In 1961, the first season after his retirement, Dark was back in the dugout, starting his second baseball career as a manager. He took the reigns of the San Francisco Giants, and won 85 games. The next season, with a lineup card stacked with Mays, Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda among others, Dark won 103 games and went to the World Series.

In the ninth inning of the seventh game, the Giants trailed the Yankees 1-0, but had runners on second and third with two out. McCovey hit a bullet, destined for right field. But second baseman Bobby Richardson moved to the right, stuck his glove in the air, and won the Yankees the championship.

Dark managed San Francisco for two more seasons, spent a year away from managing, and returned in 1966 as head of the Kansas City Athletics. It was Dark’s first go-a-round with owner Charlie O. Finley. After two seasons of sub-.500 baseball with the A’s, Dark managed the Cleveland Indians in four lackluster seasons.

But in 1974, Dark was reunited with Finley, this time in Oakland. Dark inherited a zany cast of characters, including Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson. They were also the defending World Series champs twice.

"All I had to do is go manage, and not butcher it up," Dark said.

In ‘74, Dark’s team won 90 games and the World Series against the Dodgers.

He managed the lowly Padres in 1977, going 48-65. That winter, Dark visited the instructional league in Phoenix, where he had yet another glimpse of history.

"I didn’t even know this shortstop’s name," Dark said. "But he made two plays in one ball game, and I said, ‘I’ve never seen plays like this. You just don’t make those plays accidentally. I’ve got our shortstop.’ "

But Padres’ management fought Dark, telling him Ozzie Smith was not going to start at shortstop. They said they had their shortstop (former No. 1 draft pick Bill Almon). Dark said putting Smith at shortstop that spring wasn’t the main reason he was fired, "But that started the discontent with the general manager."

Years later, Dark joked with Smith: "You go to the Hall of Fame, I get fired."

In 1983, Dark moved to Easley, where he found solace on the fairway. He occasionally makes it back to Louisiana, where four of his children live. Infatuated with golf, he’s always comforted by his memories of baseball history.

"All the things are memories you can’t buy," Dark said.




Alvin Dark managed the Oakland A’s to the World Series title in 1974, beating Walter Alston and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Benjamin Hochman
bhochman@timespicayune.com
504-826-3405.

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DARK DID A JOB - WITH NO COMPLAINTS

The greatest comeback in baseball history appeared to have been for naught.

The New York Giants, 13 1/2 games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers in mid-August, had rallied to tie for 1951 National League pennant, then split the first two games of their best-of-three playoff series.

But going into the bottom of the ninth at the Polo Grounds, the Dodgers were leading 4-1. It was a moment of high drama - but not to Giants shortstep Alvin Dark, who would lead off the inning.

"You can't go up to the plate thinking about what's happened before or what's going to happen if you do or don't do something," Dark said. "You just take each atbat as it comes and try to do your best.

"I was just trying to get the bat on the ball."

Dark did, slkapping an 0-2 pitch from Don Newcombe into right field.

What followed ranks in the top echelon of baseball lore.

Don Mueller followed with another single to right. Monty Irvin popped out, but Whitey Lockman doubled down the right-field line, driving in Dark.

Ralph Branca came in to pitch to Bobby Thompson, who popped an 0-1 fastball into the lower d eck in left field giving the New York a stunning 5-4 victory and the pennant with "The shot heard round the world."

"We might have won even if I hadn't gotten that leadoff hit," Dark said. "But I've never dwelt on that. It was just a day I did my job and things turned out right."

Just doing his job was something Dark excelled at throughout a solid 14-year career during which he played for five teams.

Dark went directly from playing to managing, guiding five teams through a sometimes stormy but overall success 13 seasons. His 1962 San Francisco Giants took the New York Yankees to seven games before losing, and his 1974 Oakland A's won the World Series.

"I was very fortunate," said Dark, who grew up in Lake Charles and excelled in baseball, basketball and football at LSU before going into the Marines in World War II. "I was in the big leagues for 28 years. I was around great tams and great people.

"There are absolutely no regrets."

Dark seemed destined for athletic greatness from the start.

An Oakland-born sonof an oilfield worker who moved to Lake Charles when Alvin was 8, Dark's earliest baseball lessons were from his father.

"My dad had played semipro ball, and when I was 10, he started buying equipment for me - bats and balls, footballs and basketballs.

"My first love was football, but Dad wanted me to be a baseball player. When he would knock off work in the evenings, he would make me play ball."

The war ended Dark's college career, but baseball hadn't forgotten him. In 1946, he signed with the Boston Braves for a $50,000 bonus. Dark made to the majors at the end of that season, appearing in 15 games.

He was back to stay in 1948, batting .322 (fourth best in the National League) and helping the Braves to their first pennant since 1914. Dark was the NL Rookie of the Year.

The .322 average was the highest of Dark's career.

"I didn't think much about it at the time," he said. "I had always hit .300 and thought I'd probably be doing it forever. Now I realize how special that was."

That was also the beginning of Dark's relationship with second baseman Eddie Stanky. They seemed oddly matched -- the Bible-quoting Dark and the pugnacious Stanky, aptly nicknamed "The Brat."

But they spent four years as teammates and roommates. Dark called Stanky his idol.

"Eddie was the perfect roommate," Dark said. "He loved baseball, movies and eating, just like me. Neither one of us drank.

"After a game, we'd go back to our hotel room, take our shoes off and talk baseball."

Two years after the Braves won the pennant, the Giants traded four players for Dark and Stanky, completing the foundation for their championship run in 1951.

Those were glory days for baseball. There were 16 teams in the majors, but integration of the game had brought in a tremendous influx of previously unavailable talent from the Negro Leagues. And it was a time of great rivalries -- particularly between the Giants and the Dodgers.

"All you thought about was winning," Dark said. "You could have three hits, but if your team didn't win that day, it didn't mean anything.

"There was tremendous competition just to stay in the majors, too. One year I was hitting .252 at the All-Star break, and I was having nightmares about being sent down. This was after I had played in a couple of All-Star games. You always hustled, because if you didn't, there was some guy down in the minors ready to take your place."

The Giants again made it to the World Series in 1954, this time sweeping the Cleveland Indians in four games. Dark hit .412 in the Series.

Dark was traded to St. Louis in 1956, to Chicago in 1958 and to Philadelphia in 1960, winding up the season and his career with the Phillies.

"Every player would like to stay with one organization, but I was always traded because the other club wanted me, not because I had worn out my welcome Where I was," Dark said. "I never took it personally."

Playing shortstop, Dark said, had prepared him well to be a manager.

"When you're playing shortstop, you're involved in every pitch," he said. "You know what the catcher is trying to do. You know what the pitcher is trying to do. You're involved in the relays and cutoffs. You're getting the knowledge a manager needs without realizing it."

Dark also said he was fortunate to be around some of the best baseball minds of his era. "Billy Southworth (Braves) was an excellent manager," Dark said. "Freddie Hutchinson (Cardinals) knew how to handle pitchers. Charlie Dressen (Braves) knew how to handle players, and Leo Durocher (Giants) just knew how to win games. I learned from them all."

Dark would manage the Giants, the A's, the Indians, the A's again and the Padres. He was fired from the Padres during spring training of 1978, finishing with a record of 994-954.

Now retired and living in Easley, S.C., Dark spends his days playing golf, speaking to church groups and appearing at card shows and old-timers games.

"Life is very satisfying," Dark said. "Like I said -- there are no complaints."


The Alvin Dark file

Comanche, Okla. Moved to

Lake Charles at age 11

Resides: In Easley, S.C.

Years in Majors: 14

Position: shortstop

Games: 1,828

BA: .289

Hits: 2,089

RBI: 757

HR: 126

Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA)
Author: Ted Lewis Staff writer

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Alvin Dark (1948 ML Rookie of the Year and 1974 World Series winner with the Oakland A’s) and Lou Piniella (1969 AL Rookie of the Year and 1990 World Series winner with the Cincinnati Reds) are the only two former Rookies of the Year to go on to manage a World Series winner.

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• Felipe Alou notched his 200th victory as the Giants' manager, becoming the second-fastest in San Francisco history to reach that total.

Alvin Dark amassed 200 wins in 340 games, compared with Alou's 342.

The rest of the story

The rest of the story

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Trivia
Dallas Green, along with Walter Alston and Alvin Dark are the only managers to have won the World Series and also played college basketball.

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On a hot August evening last summer I met a guy named Bill Kent on my way home. We got to talking and as it turns out, he is a great New York Giants fan. He told me that he gets together with a group of old Giants fans several times a year and invited me to come along to one of the gatherings. I missed the shindig in September but last night, I headed up to the Hunan Balcony on Johnson avenue in Riverdale--just a few blocks away from my apartment--for Chinese and baseball with a dozen or so other fans. I used to swear by the old Groucho Marx line (filtered through Woody Allen) about not wanting to belong to any kind of club that would have someone like me for a member, but am happy to say, I'm way past that now. I am honored to hang around or be associated with a group of baseball nerds, regardless of their age. There was a reporter there from The Riverdale Press who is a few years younger than me, and we were by the far the youngest of the group. Most of the guys were Giants fans, but there was also a Dodger fan, and a guy who was simply a baseball fan too. Some kept up with the Giants once they moved to the west coast, while others gravitated to the Mets, and even more, to the Yankees. They were great company. I peppered them with questions about Leo the Lip, Bill Rigney, Alvin Dark and the Polo Grounds shuttle, a train that ran from Manhattan over the east river and into the Bronx. As we were breaking up for the night, Steve, who I had not gotten the chance to really chat with because of where we had been sitting, asked if I had gotten a satisfactory answer to my subway question. I told him that I hadn't, and being a subway buff, he gave me the skinny. As it turns out, the 9th avenue El, which was discontinued in 1939, went up the west side of Manhattan and then curved over into the bronx, over a bridge that is no longer there, and connected with the Woodlawn line (or the Lexington avenue line, the 4 train, as it is more commonly known). Well, when they took down the line, they kept the last portion of it, primarily as a way to get from the Bronx to the Polo Grounds. The rest of the story

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Arnold Hano's "A Day in the Bleachers" is one of the lasting works of baseball literature, a book that describes, inning by inning, the action of a single game. That this game happened to be Game 1 of the 1954 World Series — in which the New York Giants' Willie Mays made the Catch, his legendary grab of a long drive by Vic Wertz of the Cleveland Indians — was Hano's good fortune; that Hano's observational ability was so acute is ours. On the occasion of a new baseball season, Hano recounts the history of "A Day in the Bleachers," soon to be reissued by San Francisco's Arion Press. I am a baseball fan. I'm 84 years old. I have been watching major league games since I was 4. I do not know whether this makes me dean of the school of fanhood, but surely I am an elder on the faculty. Most of the fires of my life have been banked. One passion remains hot and full. My passion to attend ballgames. It is an urge not to be denied. More than half a century ago, on the evening of Sept. 28, 1954, I felt that urge. I said to my wife, "I think I'll go to the game tomorrow." "You'll never get in," she said. The game tomorrow was the first game of the 1954 World Series, in New York's Polo Grounds. I stood in line for 40 minutes, mixing it up with my fellow fans. One man had come up from North Carolina. He was a cousin of former big league pitcher Max Lanier. I was a fan of Lanier, the old left-hander (I'm left-handed) who once beat the Yankees in a World Series contest. The line moved. I lost my North Carolina friend. I finally stood at the cashier's cage, where I plunked down $2.10 for a bleacher ticket, No. 1662, and entered the Polo Grounds. I saw the opening game of the 1954 World Series from a wooden plank in the centerfield bleachers, the New York Giants (my team) against the Cleveland Indians (my enemy). When I subwayed home six hours later in a state of delicious languor, I decided to write about my day. The book I wrote, "A Day in the Bleachers," does not deal just with the game. Oh, it does that too — the famous catch by Willie Mays takes up nine pages — but mainly it is about my day. I banter with a Brooklyn Dodger fan nearby (she carried a flag proclaiming her allegiance). I mutter incantations of hope during the not-quite 10 innings of strife. I wince at Cleveland pitcher Bob Feller's valiant attempt to get himself in shape by doing push-ups in centerfield during batting practice, his backside too high. I marvel as Alvin Dark of the Giants intercepts a ground ball with his bare hand in the eighth inning. And I recall one final picture that day, umpire Larry Napp running down the right field foul line, indicating that a ball struck by New York's Dusty Rhodes was indeed a game-winning home run. Immediately, all I had seen began to percolate in my brain. I had a book to write. It took me a few days more than three weeks to complete the manuscript. I gave the work to my agent, Sterling Lord, who said he knew exactly the right editor: Hiram Hayden of Crown. "Hiram is a baseball fan. He'll do it." A few days later, Hayden phoned Lord to invite us over. "I can't do this book, " he began. "I don't know how to sell it." Baseball books before this, he explained, had been aimed at the kiddie market. This one was for adults. "Where do I sell it?" he asked. Wiseguy that I was (and am), I volunteered: "In bookstores." The rest of the story By Arnold Hano

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In Game 3, the Dodgers headed into the bottom of the ninth with what looked like a secure 4-1 lead. But the overworked Newcombe, pitching on just two days' rest, started to fall apart. He gave up a single to the Giants' Alvin Dark and another single to Don Mueller, which sent Dark to third. Monte Irvin, who led the National League with 121 RBI that year, blew his chance to drive in a run by popping out. But Whitey Lockman hit a double down the left-field line, scoring Dark. Mueller slid awkwardly into third, injuring his ankle. New York manager Leo Durocher sent Clint Hartung in as a pinch-runner. Filmmaker Brian Biegel (l.) enlisted former New York Police Department crime scene investigator ... ... Dan Austin to help him locate Bobby Thomson's famous home run ball. The rest of the story BY MICHAEL O'KEEFFE DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

[shof]

http://story.scout.com/a.z?s=318&p=2&c=589736

http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseb...Dark_Alvin.stm

http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/maga...911357,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Dark

http://www.thealvindarkfoundation.org/

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He is known best nationally for a solid and storied 14-year playing career in major league baseball, much of it during the heyday of the New York/San Francisco Giants, and a major league managing career that included a World Series title and a pennant for those same Giants. But South Louisiana sports buffs and long, long, long-time UL athletic fans know Al Dark very differently. To them, he's the "Swamp Fox" ... a member of what many historians consider the greatest football team in the university's history. Now, 63 years after Dark's escapades became legendary for then-SLI's undefeated and Oil Bowl champion team in 1943, he's being recognized for those achievements. Dark, now 84, will be in Lafayette for two days of activities including a private Friday night reception, and he will be honored Saturday during the UL-UL Monroe football contest at Cajun Field. "He's never really been recognized by the university," said Pat McDonald, one of the organizers of the weekend's activities. "It's about time we honor him, for everything he did here." UL baseball coach Tony Robichaux will make a presentation to Dark during Saturday's football game. The rest of the story Dan McDonald dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com

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About time!

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About time!

Understatement

I was talking to Glen Raggio just this morning and he made a statement that blew me away.
" Alvin Dark is UL's Jim Thorpe "


Glen is right.

Football: Quarterback, Running back, Punter, extra points.

Baseball: Shortstop bat .462

Basketball: member of Louisiana All-Stars

Track: At the Soutwestern Relays, that included LSU and Tulane Alvin Dark scored wins in the 100 yard dash, broad jump, tied for first in the high jump and ran on UL's winning 440- yard, and sprint medley relay teams.

Golf: consistently hit in the 70's and recorded a low of 71