A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (43 page)

"There's no good accommodations for wives of Negro
players down here," he replied. "I really hope to see the day when
the Dodgers train in the West so she has a decent place to
stay."

The black wives were not able to enjoy the Florida
sunshine like their white counterparts, among them Ginger Drysdale,
Beverly Snider, Sally Sherry and Sue Perranoski.

Black Dodgers ventured out of Dodgertown with
caution. They could not play on the golf courses, had to sit in
black balconies at the movies, could not drink out of "whites only"
drinking fountains, and often were refused restaurant service.
Fishing boats were not rented to them, auto rental agencies refused
them service, and Roseboro was so badly cut by a barber trimming
his sideburns that it caused a severe infection, requiring a
doctor's care. The black players took to cutting each other's
hair.

But O'Malley was committed to Florida. The club had
this great facility. They were not going to abandon it. O'Malley
outfitted Dodgertown with an Olympic-size swimming pool,
volleyball, shuffleboard, tennis and badminton courts. He had a
practice golfing green laid out.

The club built a theater and showed first-run movies.
There was a day room with a TV, table tennis, a library and further
entertainment options. The rec hall featured lively billiard games.
Jim Gilliam was a shark with a pool cue.

Besides, the move west did not deter many New
Yorkers from rooting for the team. The Florida location allowed
many of their old fans to see them in Spring Training, which was a
financial and public relations bonanza that made the Dodgers a
national team. By the 1960s, half of Brooklyn had seemingly moved
to Florida anyway.

O'Malley was determined to make his club the
classiest in baseball. For years he had taken a back seat to the
New York Yankees. Now, in his fifth year in Los Angeles, he was
ready to move his franchise past even the vaunted Yankees in every
way. His team trained in the best facility in baseball. They were
ready to move into a stadium that was the best in the world. For
all of Yankee Stadium's tradition, it was not close to the spanking
new Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers had played at the Coliseum, which
was at least as famous and filled with tradition as Yankee Stadium,
but they knew all too well that ghosts and past glories could not
replace a state-of-the-art palace.

O'Malley sensed as the nation did that Los Angeles
was the city of the future, and he was cresting this wave like a
surfer on a wild ride. All was in his favor; the stadium, the
weather, the Beautiful People, and of course his team, which was
favored to win and looked fabulous. But he had one more ace up his
sleeve, and when Elektra II was introduced, that was the kicker.
The Dodgers had their own plane. Not even the Yankees had their own
plane, a "hotel in the sky." While O'Malley was the architect of
Dodger opulence, his son Peter, a graduate of the prestigious
Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, was
more active in the daily operations of the club than ever
before.

While Junior Gilliam may have been a billiards ace,
he was no match for manager Walter Emmons Alston. The two developed
a friendship that would last for years, with Gilliam becoming the
first black coach under Alston, in large measure because of the
hours they spent shooting pool.

Alston was beginning his ninth year at the helm. He
was less than a marginal player, and had been a rube in the eyes of
many, especially in sophisticated New York. His hiring inspired the
headline, "Walter Who?" in the
New York Daily News
. Born in
1911 in Venice, Ohio, Alston's father was an automobile worker who
owned his farm. Alston's early nickname was "Smokey" because he was
the fastest pitcher on the town team (Alston would play semi-pro
ball for fun until he was 60).

He played at the University of Miami (Ohio) but
dropped out to get married. During the Great Depression he found no
work so he returned to school, borrowing money from a local church
and taking odd jobs to help with tuition. He was the captain of the
baseball and basketball teams, earned a bachelor's degree, and
signed with the St. Louis Cardinals. But the big club was loaded
with stars like Johnny Mize, Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial, so
advancement was a problem.

In his single Major League at-bat with St. Louis in
1936 he struck out. He was returned to the bushes and never
returned as a player. His break came when Branch Rickey took over
the Dodgers. Rickey knew him from his days as general manager in
St. Louis. They had a lot in common. Both were Midwesterners, very
religious, and had gone to college in an age in which college men
were not the norm.

Alston's managerial career began at Portsmouth of
the Mid-Atlantic League. To supplement his income Alston taught
biology and mechanical drawing while coaching in the off-seasons at
a local Ohio high school. He managed in the Dodger farm system for
13 minor league seasons. Eventually, Alston took over the club's
triple-A farm club at Montreal, where he gained the reputation of a
man who could manage black players.

When the Dodgers hired him prior to the 1954
campaign, one sportswriter wrote, "The Dodgers do not
need
a
manager and that is why they got Alston." The team he inherited,
the 1953 National League champions, had so many veterans that few
had any minor league association with him.

From the beginning, Alston seemed to constantly
fight an uphill struggle. He took over from Charley Dressen in
1953. Dressen had demanded a multi-year deal and was summarily
shown the door. Alston was happy to sign a one-year contract, so
the message was clear from the get-go: "No multi-year deals." It
took a certain kind of man to accept that premise, especially when
it kept repeating itself. Alston had been hired less because of his
merits, and more because of personal - not on-field -
dissatisfaction with the previous man. Winning recognition in his
own right would prove to be the Great White Whale of his career.
Because he was not a "baseball Ahab," Alston would some day achieve
what an Ahab could not.

After two straight National League pennants, the
Dodgers under Alston lost to the New York Giants, who featured the
return of Willie Mays from Army service. Right off the bat, Walt
Alston had produced results that failed to match his predecessor.
To make matters worse, the Giants under Leo Durocher won the World
Series, the "wait 'til next year" goal that seemed unattainable, no
matter how close the club so often had come to attaining it.

1955 might have been the Great White Whale, and it
certainly was "next year," but in the eyes of many, while Alston
was given credit, he was seen as skippering a luxury cruise liner
across placid seas.
Anybody
could have managed the 1955
Dodgers to the Promised Land. True, they started out hot; and true,
they ran into a rough patch in which Alston's calming influence was
credited. But capturing a seven-game World Series from the New York
Yankees;
that
no Dodger manager had done before. The world
gave credit to the fabled
Boys of Summer
, the title of Roger
Kahn's book.

If the Dodgers had stayed in Brooklyn and Alston had
done there what he did in Los Angeles, he would have eventually
become an iconic figure. Of course, he may not have survived some
of his biggest trials if he had been forced to do it with the New
York press as opposed to the relatively-friendly L.A. media. But
the 1955 World Championship earned Alston much goodwill should he
face tough times, and he would need every inch of it.

"With a year under his belt, Alston became a better
manager," said Duke Snider, who was never president of the Walt
Alston Fan Club.

In 1956 the Dodgers again won the pennant, but the
Series was lost. Alston and Jackie Robinson had no love for each
other. Robinson was injured and Alston suspected he was
malingering. When Robinson announced to the media that he was
healthy and ready to play, Alston continued to bench him. Alston
took him on for taking the internal matter to the press. A shouting
match ensued. It got so bad that Alston "invited" Robinson into the
manager's office, telling him, "Only one of us is gonna come
out."

Robinson backed off. It was a tactic Alston, who at
6-2 and 210 pounds with huge hands and forearms, employed on a few
select occasions in his career. He was quiet, religious and
unassuming, but if he got "backed up," watch out. Robinson was
adept with his fists; his courage was undisputed, but he also knew,
as he had told Branch Rickey way back when, that "I can turn my
cheek." Later, when Robinson got into an argument with an umpire,
Alston failed to come to his defense, and that meant more bad
blood.

When Robinson refused to accompany the team on the
Japanese exhibition tour at season's end, that was the last straw.
He was traded to the Giants, the ultimate insult. Robinson's real
problems were with O'Malley, who resented his great love for Branch
Rickey, a man O'Malley despised. Instead of accepting the trade,
Robinson retired.

The Alston-Robinson feud caused some in the black
press to accuse the manager of racism, but that charge had no
merit. Alston had been hired by Rickey in large measure because he
wanted to replace some of the racists who
were
managing in
the organization, principally to pave the way for his grand
"emancipation" plan. Alston's rise through the system was largely
based on his good performance with young black players. Roy
Campanella, Don Newcombe and Jim Gilliam were given special care by
Alston in the 1950s. They respected him.

In 1957 the team performed below their usual
expectations. They were beginning to age. Alston's homespun
demeanor was not considered ideal for the move to Los Angeles in
1958. More pizzazz would have been preferred, but he was what he
was. After the club's seventh place finish in L.A., Alston was
frustrated at how many over-the-hill veterans he was forced to keep
on keep on the roster in order to attract fans. The first year in
California was considered a disaster by some, who felt that the
club only had one chance to make a first impression. Walt was on
the hot seat. He knew the team needed a youth overhaul, but was not
allowed to make the moves he wanted to. The club wanted
aging-yet-big names to sell tickets, but Alston knew they were
costing him victories that the talented youth was not allowed to
deliver.

Despite having argued for youth, Alston was
universally blamed for the use of veterans. Dressen was brought
back as a coach. According to some reports, Dressen had no loyalty
except to himself, lobbied behind the scenes to take over his old
job, and nobody made any effort to dissuade the notion. Alston was
charitable and said Dressen was a good baseball man and he
appreciated having him around.

Again, he reached into his bag of tricks and produced
an improbable World Championship. The 1959 Dodgers won a mere 88
regular season games. They were a hodge-podge of the old, the young
and the cast-off. However, enough of Alston's young charges were
allowed to play and it paid off. They played in a football stadium,
and nobody could quite figure out how to strategize the Coliseum,
to make it an advantage. Against the odds, Alston led his team to a
comeback when San Francisco fell apart; a play-off win over
Milwaukee; and a six-game Series victory against Chicago. It was
the first time a team had ever ascended from seventh place to a
World Championship the next season. Dressen was let go. So was
Bobby Bragan, another high-profile ex-manager hired by the club as
a coach.

At that point, Alston should have been the "king of
L.A.," a crown later worn with glory by the likes of John McKay,
Pat Riley and Pete Carroll. He well could have been accorded
near-Hall of Fame status. Instead, he was made fun of, still not
respected,

On top of that, Alston's character was impugned in
that, despite his reputation with black athletes at Montreal and in
Brooklyn, some people still viewed him as a racist and
anti-Semitic. His disagreements with Robinson had led to tensions
with the younger black players. In 1961, the Dodgers featured two
young Jewish pitchers, Larry Sherry and Sandy Koufax. One night
Alston caught the two of them coming in late after curfew. Alston
became so enraged that he banged their locked door down, breaking
his World Series ring. He was a lit fuse who took the lack of
respect often accorded him only for so long before exploding. He
could be mighty ornery.

Alston and Koufax took years to get on the same page.
To Walt, a baseball player chewed tobacco, was vocal in his dugout
exhortations of teammates; loved, ate and breathed baseball. Koufax
was quiet. He did not yell and scream, using swear words as a sign
of "toughness." His interests included classical music and fine
dining. Alston could not relate to that, even though he was not a
yeller or a foulmouth. But Sandy's development was a long time
coming. To Alston, it was a sign that the pitcher lacked
competitive fire. His efforts at reaching Koufax, to get him to
meet his expectations, were mistakenly taken by some as
disparagement over the fact Sandy was a Jew. There was in the early
1960s a growing divide, in which people felt only "hip" whites from
the East or West Coasts could relate to minorities of any kind.
Walt was neither hip nor from either coast.

When Los Angeles lost the 1961 pennant to
Cincinnati, Buzzie Bavasi gave him no vote of confidence. The
general manager said finishing second behind the Reds was "no
disgrace," but when asked if that meant Alston's job was secure, he
replied, "I didn't say that," which must have made Walt feel warm
and fuzzy all over. Alston was allowed to twist in the wind. Public
"votes of confidence" for Alston never served the purpose; they
seemed to have the opposite effect.