Aug. 4, 1964 - Alvin Dark (pictured with Willie Mays), manager of the San Francisco Giants, spent most of the day facing the issue raised by a report that he considered Negro and Latin-American players deficient in alertness, team effort, and mental capacity.
After meeting with commissioner Ford Frick at lunch, Dark held a news conference in the manager’s office of the visiting clubhouse at Shea Stadium about an hour and a half before a scheduled game against the Mets.
He denied vigorously the views attributed to him in a column by Stan Isaacs that appeared in Newsday, a Long Island daily newspaper, about two weeks ago.
He said he felt the story was a “misunderstanding” and that many of his statements had been “deformed.”
“I don’t think Stan tried to write this in any way to hurt anyone,” Dark said. “I’ve always considered him my friend, and we will go on being friends. He came to Philadelphia last week and discussed this with me.
“The only way I can figure what happened is that I’m from the South. I can see why that can be easily misunderstood. When I first signed on as manager of the Giants in 1960, Chub Feeney, the club’s vice president, had dinner with me and told me I might have trouble because there were so many Negroes on the team.
“I told him then that he was wrong — that he didn’t know how I feel about Negroes. He said he’d known someone from the South in the Army and knew the way they feel. I told him that this didn’t have anything to do with me — that my feelings were to treat every man individually, and that’s the way I’d run my ballclub.
“That’s the way I have. But if my own vice president could misunderstand my views before we talked them out, I can see how a newspaperman might.”
Isaacs was present throughout most of the news conference. He made no comment while Dark repeatedly referred to being misquoted.
Afterward, Isaacs said:
“It is true, as Dark said, that the subject of our discussion was the Giant ballclub and not racial questions. I can see how he would feel there was a misunderstanding, even though I don’t. I certainly did not intend to castigate him for his views, but to open a discussion on a point which is open to honest difference of interpretation.”
A key quote began: “The trouble with this ballclub is…” It went on to attribute the club’s difficulties to Dark’s alleged racial evaluations.
Isaacs conceded that at no point in the conversation had Dark coupled the two subjects directly.
Dark said at his conference today:
“I do not believe you can judge people by groups — Negro, Spanish-speaking, white, or any other way. You judge them as individuals.”
“When I made Willie Mays team captain,” he said at another point, “I wasn’t thinking of his color. I was thinking of his leadership ability. I got a letter from the NAACP commending me for that, but I didn’t feel I deserved any praise for that. I wanted to name Mays captain two years ago — I was ready for it, he was ready for it, but I didn’t think people were. Now, with all that’s gone on, they are.”
“I don’t feel I have to defend myself, to my players or to anyone,” he continued. “If my players can’t accept me on my actions — I accept them on theirs — words won’t do any good.”
“I don’t believe any of this has had any effect on the play of the club,” he added.
When the Giants reached the clubhouse today, the Negro and Latin-American players received in the mail a clipping of the Newsday column. There was no indication who sent it to them.
Dark requested his meeting with Frick to clarify his position. The commissioner expressed confidence in Dark’s career-long record on this point.
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