Alvin Dark And The Persistence Of Racism In The Major Leagues

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By Russ Walsh

I have spent much of this year researching the 60^th anniversary of the 1964 Major League Baseball season and specifically the thrilling rise and spectacular fall of the Philadelphia Phillies, whose epic collapse has left a permanent scar on those Phillies fans old enough to remember. Recently my research brought to light an incident that I had forgotten, but which remains illustrative of how baseball continued to struggle with race relations 17 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

In the thick of the pennant race in July 1964, after the second-place San Francisco Giants had lost seven of nine games, Newsday reporter Stan Isaacs sat down with Giants manager Alvin Dark to ask him about the team’s recent struggles. At the time the Giants were in second place just one game behind the Phillies. Isaacs quoted Dark as saying, “We have trouble because we have so many Negro and Spanish-speaking players on this team. They are just not able to perform up to the level of the white 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.” And, aside from rare exceptions like Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays, “You couldn’t name three colored players in our league who are always mentally alert to take advantage of situations.”

At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, we could expect these clearly racist statements to cause quite a stir and they did – for a short while. Dark was called into Commissioner Ford Frick’s office to explain himself. He denied everything, claiming his statements were taken out of context or misinterpreted. Philadelphia Daily News reporter Stan Hochman said, “He had to deny them to live with the Giants and stay in baseball. But Stan Isaacs [at the time one of the most respected sportswriters in the country] does not misquote people.”

Dark kept his job, at least for a while. Willie Mays, who Dark had named captain at the beginning of the season, convinced teammates Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Jim Ray Hart and others that the team had a better chance of winning the pennant with Dark than without him. Jackie Robinson came to Dark’s defense, telling the New York Times, “I’ve known Dark for many years, and my relationships with him have always been exceptional. I have found him to be a gentleman, and above all, unbiased. Our relationship has not only been on the baseball field but off it. We played golf together.”

Who was Alvin Dark? Dark’s history is like many other baseball managers of the era. Born in Oklahoma, he grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana. A three-sport star during his high school years, he went to Louisiana State to play football. After a stint in the Marines during World War II, Dark signed a bonus contract with the Boston Braves. He made his Major League debut in the summer of 1946, as soon as his Marine obligations were complete. After a year in the Minors, Dark became the regular shortstop for Boston in 1948 and won the Rookie of the Year that season.

Traded to the Giants in 1950, Dark blossomed into an All-Star. A player with limited quickness and range, he compensated for his weaknesses with good positioning and heady play. After several years as a starter, Dark became a journeyman utility infielder with the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, and Phillies.

After he retired as a player in 1960, he was hired to replace Tom Sheehan as Giants manager in 1961. His team won the National League pennant in 1962 but finished a disappointing third in 1963. Dark was known throughout the Major Leagues as a deeply religious man, but also one with a fiery temper who often took out his frustrations on umpires. Dark was also embroiled in a very public love affair with a flight attendant, despite being married with four children. The affair brought a rebuke from Giants owner Horace Stoneham, who asked Dark how he could manage his team if he could not manage his personal life.

At the end of the 1964 season, with the Giants finishing in fourth place with a 90-72 record, Dark was fired. Whether it was due to his racist remarks, his affair, or his team’s failure to meet expectations is unknown. It was likely a combination of those factors. What is perhaps surprising is that Dark was not unemployed for long. He was immediately hired as a coach for the Chicago Cubs. In 1966, Charlie Finley hired him to manage the Kansas City Athletics. Fired from that job in 1967, he was immediately signed to manage the Cleveland Indians in 1968. In 1974, he was back with Finley, this time in Oakland. His final managerial assignment was with the San Diego Padres in 1977. As late as 1986, Dark was still employed by the Chicago White Sox as director of player development.

Dark’s clearly racist views did not appear to damage his employability in the Major Leagues. Two decades after his comments were made public, he was still making high level decisions about the futures of young players. Had his viewpoint changed? We don’t have documentation of that. What we do know is that his racism was at the very least tolerated, and likely shared, by many others in baseball front offices.

I don’t mean this piece to be solely an indictment of Alvin Dark. He simply said the quiet part out loud. The views he so bluntly expressed were common throughout baseball and throughout society at the time. Through at least the 1990s, the National Football League had its own version of Dark’s statements with its questioning of whether Blacks had the “mental capacities” to be quarterbacks. Racism is a recurring theme in American history and we shouldn’t expect that to be any different in our professional sports.

The point is that while we celebrate Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, many other barriers still stood in the way of players of color for decades afterwards. Of course, players of color debunked the theories of people like Alvin Dark with their play on the field. Over time, all of America came to see that Dark’s “mental alertness” critique was bunk. Unfortunately, we can only speculate how many talented players were never given the chance to show their talents because they fell victim to race-based evaluations over those many years.

Russ Walsh is a retired teacher, baseball coach, and writer living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is a lifelong and long-suffering Philadelphia Phillies fan. He writes for the Society for American Baseball Research and for MLBReport.com. You can contact him through X (formerly known as Twitter) at @faithofaphilli1.