The Dark Controversy; Conduct of Giants' Manager Viewed As Reply to Implication of Prejudice

Usually, a visit to New York is a festive and nostalgic occasion for Manager Alvin Dark of the San Francisco Giants. His greatest days as a player were enjoyed here when the Giants had .“New York” on their shirts, and to Giant fans he was always a special hero.

Today, Dark and his Giants are here for a two‐game series with the New York Mets at Shea Stadium and the atmosphere is entirely different. Dark is under a cloud because of recent statements attributing a “white supremacy” position to him, and when he gets to the ball park this evening he is prepared to face a battery of questions on the subject. It may be the most painful hour of his life.

It is ironic that Dark should be caught in this controversy. He is a Southerner but his actions in the matter of race relations have been scrupulously fair through 15 years of major league life. He had Negro teammates on five National League clubs—including Willie Mays on the Giants—and as manager of San Francisco has succeeded in leading a multiracial roster to a championship.

With the Giants, Dark succeeded where his predecessors had failed. It is true that the Giants, since moving to San Francisco in 1958, have had more distinct “cliques” than most clubs, but that is a condition that antedates Dark's managerial regime, which began in 1961.

On all clubs, the Negro and white players tend to go their own ways off the field. The Negroes, after all, still live in and travel in a fundamentally segregated society, and many white players, from the South and elsewhere, are not always in the forefront of social and cultural enlightenment.

The Giants, in addition, have an important group of Latin Americans who have a language problem and a distinct heritage. They, too, naturally seek one another's company and tend to identify with one another.

All this was an established part of the Giant picture when Bill Rigney of Oakland, Calif., was manager and when Tom Sheehan replaced him.

Yet Dark, following Sheehan, brought his club in third in 1981 and won a pennant playoff from the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1962.

This team came within an inch of winning the World Series (when Willie McCovey's line drive was caught by Bobby Richardson of the Yankees) with a regular line‐up that included two Negroes (McCovey and Mays); two Puerto Ricans (Orlando Cepeda and José Pagan); two Dominicans (Felipe Alou and Juan Marichal); two white rookies from Illinois (Tom Haller and Chuck Hiller); a former football star from Mississippi Southern College (Jim Davenport); a couple cf New Englanders (Jack Sanford and Stu Miller) and a blue‐eyed blond from Wisconsin (Harvey Kuenn).

A more integrated team is hard to imagine, and no one questioned Dark's skill or integrity in running it.

How, then, did the current controversy arise?

About two weeks ago, Dark had a long, analytic discussion of the Giants with an interviewer from Newsday on Long Island. In one aspect of it, Dark remarked on the large number of mental lapses made by his team.

He was quoted as having said: “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 white ballplayers 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 white players.”

These statements subsequently received wider attention through a radio show on WNBC in New York.

The incident has been getting increasing attention and has become a nightmare for Dark, whose career is threatened by it. He was instructed by Horace Stoneham, the owner of the Giants, to say nothing more about it.

Those who have known Dark for years, who traveled with him as a player, who have kept close contact with him as a manager and who have discussed his philosophy in depth, have largely rallied to his defense.

Whatever private prejudices may exist, they have had no visible effect on Dark's judgment as a manager or on his behavior as a social being, according to those who know him well. On his team today, Jim Ray Hart, a Negro, is playing third base ahead of Davenport, the Mississippian; Jesus Alou, a Dominican and the younger brother of Felipe (who was traded away for a pitcher), gets the call over Kuenn.