A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (44 page)

"The Dodgers never plan to fire Alston," said one
observer. "They prefer to torment him."

Enter Leo "the Lip" Durocher and the beginning of
Greek tragedy, or comedy, L.A.-style. Fired by the Giants, Durocher
had moved to Beverly Hills. It was typical of Leo that he had not
moved to Santa Monica, or Woodland Hills, or Pasadena, or any of
the other comfortable locales where successful Los Angelenos tended
to live. No, he moved to Beverly Hills, where
Frank
and
George
and
Dino
lived. He was
not
a
sympathetic figure. This was a guy who said he would knock down his
own mother to win a game. Babe Ruth beat him up when, as his
roommate, Durocher stole his watch. He was a gambler, a hard
drinker, a womanizer who cheated on his wives. He ordered his
pitchers to throw at the opponents, often to outright hit them. He
wanted spikes flying, did not mind if the other guy got hurt. He
probably used a spy in the scoreboard to flash signals to the
Giants, giving them an edge in 1951. He went for every advantage;
legal, illegal or immoral.

He was a backstabber, a “table for one” guy who
played politics, went after the other fellas’ job, position, wife,
girlfriend, sister, friend. Durocher had an exclusive Hollywood
tailor, a mansion, drove a Caddy. Alston lived modestly, went back
to Darrtown in the winter, and wore clothes off the rack. Leo had
guys in the press do his dirty work. He made fun of people on a
lower pay scale (“My dry cleaning bills are bigger than his
salary”). His endorsements were for cigarettes and beer. He smoked,
got in guys’ faces, reeked of tobacco. The umpires felt his spittle
on their faces, his shoes “accidentally” kicking them during
arguments. He had a deal with Schlitz beer, an appropriately ugly
name for an ugly man. Durocher was no matinee idol, but he could
“dirty talk” a woman into bed.

“Always try to get her in the sack the first five
minutes of a date,” he advised. “That way if she says no you’ve got
time to score another broad. You’d be surprised, there’s a helluva
lot of famous broads who say yes quick.”

Durocher bragged of his sexual conquests, mostly
lying, not carrying if he spread rumors or impugned the reputation
of an actress in the tabloids. He was from Massachusetts, seemed
like he was from the Bowery, but thought of himself as Beverly
Hills or Park Avenue. He cultivated big shot friends like Frank
Sinatra, the Rat Pack, George Raft, New York Mob boys, gang
hitters. It was always “Frank called” and “Frank’s comin’ by,” and
most everybody looked at each other, rolled their eyes. BS

He thought money was class, a fancy car defined you,
a gold watch, a big ring. He was like the Alec Baldwin character in
Glengarry Glen Ross
who waves his expensive timepiece at
poor Ed Harris and says, “My watch is worth more than your car.
That’s who I am, pal.”

Branch Rickey fired him for immoralities, using the
cover of his gambling suspension of 1947. What an odd couple
those two
made. Leo and Walter O’Malley got along. Not
surprising. Strangely, the word that most appropriately suits Leo
is not
im
moral, but
a
moral. He was not evil. If the
right thing was convenient, that was okay by him. If anything good
can be said of Leo, it was that he was not a racist. Maybe an
anti-Semite, probably used the N-word, but for effect more than
anything. He gave Willie Mays his chance, stuck with him when
Willie needed a friend. It was a shining moment for “Mista Leo” and
he deserves credit. Famed Los Angeles sportswriter Mel Durslag
wrote there was a “good Leo” and a “bad Leo,” which was better than
just a “bad Leo.” When he was dying he appealed to God during an
interview, expressing hope that his sins would be forgiven and
Heaven opened for a wretch. John Wayne did a similar thing. At
least Leo acknowledged the existence of the deity, which is
certainly
better than nothing.

But beyond all other considerations, Leo Durocher was
a winning baseball man. He was a Yankee in their heyday, a member
of the St. Louis “Gashouse Gang” – winners – and resurrected losers
into winning outfits in Brooklyn, New York, later Chicago, even in
Houston, for a while at least. He was Billy Martin before Martin,
cut out of the same cloth. He always wore out his welcome but left
his mark wherever he went.

Durocher was old school, brother. His starters went
every fourth day and they went nine innings. His regulars did not
beg out, take days off, sit out the nightcap of a twin bill, a day
game after a night game, or with hangovers, hangnails or hangdog
attitudes. They played through injuries and pain. Durocher played
to win. If the season was lost he would dog it, not care, let his
work ethic slide, but he did not tolerate it in others. If the
pennant was still on the line he was relentless. He did not care
about second place money, which some players and coaches needed in
those days. He had his, probably got dough from his actress
ex-wife, keeping him in style. Maybe he did a little gigolo work on
the side.

Mel Durslag was a modern Iago,
Othello's
(expletive deleted)-disturbing "friend." He had a reputation for
writing arbitrary columns advocating the position of selected
patrons. Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke would use Durslag to spread
nasty rumors about players in order to gain the upper hand.
Durocher advocated his cause through Durslag too.

After his firing and move to L.A., Durocher did some
commentary on nationally televised baseball broadcasts, but he was
not very good at it. His place was in the dugout, managing. He was
not built to be a "second fiddle" to anybody. Durocher approached
Durslag and had him write a national article he called "an
explanation to my friends," which was as self-serving as it
sounded. In it, Durocher made it clear that the fact he was not
managing was not his idea. He intimated that he had been
"blackballed" by baseball. Leo made it clear he wanted to manage,
and since he lived in L.A., well . . . Durslag managed to make
Durocher look sympathetic, no mean feat.

It was around this time that the expansion Angels
came into being. With Dodger Stadium not yet built, and the club
struggling after the 1959 title, O'Malley decided to add some spice
to the mix. Durocher was hired as a "celebrity coach."

"Though Alston had nothing to with Leo's
appointment, he was solicited to make the official announcement,"
wrote Durslag in an article penned for
Look
magazine called
"Manager in a Hair Shirt." "After a flight from Darrtown to
California, he had the privilege of revealing to the world the
newest candidate for his job."

Durslag pointed out the obvious differences between
the two. Alston's "comfortable but modest home" as opposed to Leo's
$150,000 mansion. Alston's hobby: woodworking. Leo's? Women . . .
gambling . . . Alston's Mercury, Leo's Cadillac. Alston's
off-the-rack clothes from a store in Ohio; Durocher exclusive
tailor whose clientele included major movie stars.

Alston preferred to "carry a beef" until cooler
heads prevailed, while Durocher preferred to handle disputes in the
here and now. When Durslag rebuked Alston in print over a dugout
berating of Durocher, Alston confronted the writer and snapped,
"You're pretty sensitive about Durocher's feelings, but you don't
seem to care much about mine."

Alston demonstrated thin skin on this and other
occasions. A strange Kabuki theatre with Leo, the press and the
club was in full swing in 1962. Alston was on his usual one-year
contract status. In later years, Alston's tenuous position with the
club was recalled with a certain amount of historical
revisionism.

"Walter knew he had a job as long as I was there,"
recalled Buzzie Bavasi. "He was the type of person you liked to
have running your business because you knew where he was all the
time. If you needed him, you'd call his hotel room and he'd always
be there."

By contrast, Leo Durocher could be anywhere; the
race track, a bar, or
incognito
with somebody else's wife.
Alston was "a quiet, strong and honest man who never makes excuses
- I have always felt he should have ridden shotgun through Indian
territory in the old days," broadcaster Vin Scully said of him. He
"manages as he lives . . . and he has done it almost without your
noticing it."

But the Los Angeles always wanted more. By 1962, a
talented core of sports scribes included the likes of Bud Furillo
and Mel Durslag of the
Los Angeles Herald-Express
, and some
excellent writers at the
L.A. Times
: Jim Murray, John Hall
and Mal Florence. This was Hollywood, and they wanted color, some
tabloid flare. Every sports story was a feature. New rules were
being written when it came to the coverage of athletics.

Over at USC, young coach John McKay held court at a
nearby pub called Julie's. Twirling his cigar, drinking whiskey,
and dispensing Irish wit, humor and vitriol in one entertaining
package, he was a sportswriter's dream. Every time he opened his
mouth it was story time, and they wanted something similar from the
other coaches and managers in the L.A. constellation. There was no
shortage of interesting characters on the L.A. sports scene: Bo
Belinsky and Dean Chance, Bill Rigney, "Hot Rod" Hundley. UCLA
football coach Red Sanders was still fresh in their minds, too.
Sanders was one of the all-timers, a whiskey-drinking,
skirt-chasing Southerner who died
in flagrante delicto
in a
Sunset Strip brothel just a few years earlier.

Naturally, the writers gravitated to the
fast-talking Durocher and found Alston boring. From the standpoint
of selling newspapers, his honesty was not the best policy.
Sports Illustrated's
Robert Creamer called him, "Whistler's
Mother with a scorecard in his lap."

"If you were to meet Walter Alston, you'd come away
convinced you hadn't been introduced," another writer wrote.

"I appreciate a good shotgun," Alston said. "I
appreciate a good target rifle. I appreciate a good pool table. The
fancy clothes and big dinners don't appeal to me much. Any time a
man tries to be something he's not, he's only hurting himself."

"He played the game by the book," recalled catcher
John Roseboro. "He knew baseball as well as anyone, but he missed
some opportunities because he didn't see them soon enough and seize
them fast enough. He didn't want to be second-guessed by the press
and the public and didn't want to be criticized by the front
office."

"Alston's greatest ability was to do nothing - having
confidence with the guys to say, 'Don't let me screw things up
because your talent will come out somewhere during the ballgame,' "
said first baseman Ron Fairly. "His patience allowed our abilities
to eventually surface."

Alston loved "little ball," a style of play he had to
adapt when
The Boys of Summer
departed; the power supply was
depleted; the Coliseum demanded a new style; and the club moved
into pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium. He platooned,
double-switched, ordered intentional walks, and always seemed to
know in the third inning what to expect in the eighth, a sign of a
hard-working manager. Alston's quiet ways meant that when he did
have a temper outburst, it had an effect, as opposed to the
blustery Durocher, who always seemed steamed about something.

"He was a man's man and when he talked to you, he
looked you straight in the eye," recalled pitcher Ron Perranoski.
"But you just didn't want to fool around with Walter. He could
physically break you in two and was capable of doing so 'til the
day he died."

An example of Alston's physical strength came when he
arm-wrestled mammoth Frank Howard, one of the biggest, strongest
baseball players who ever lived . . . and won.

"We didn't let those gray hairs on his head fool us
into thinking he couldn't take any of us on," recalled Fairly. Once
or twice a year, Alston would call a closed-door meeting, and if
his ire was up, "he'd have a rough time lighting his cigarette,"
said Fairly. Alston would go around the room, pointing accusatory
fingers, laying it all on the line. But these were rare. His normal
method was to wait a day, until tempers - probably his own more
than anybody's - had died down, and then have a private meeting
with a player

The Alston-Durocher controversy built up in the
spring of 1962 when Durocher arrived at Dodgertown and was assigned
Spartan quarters in the single men's barracks. Durocher immediately
tried to move "off base" where he could utilize his maid and cook
from Beverly Hills, but team rules only allowed married men to live
off base. When word of that leaked out, Durocher was inundated with
marriage proposals from local women willing to make him "eligible"
for the married men's housing allowance. But Durocher upgraded his
accommodations with lavish touches, then personally oversaw his
meal preparations. He ate specialty dishes while the rest of the
club ate what was offered them.

The writers, who got zero from Alston beyond
platitudes and baseball cliches, went to Leo. Alston accepted the
situation. He knew his "celebrity coach" was a colorful figure, and
insisted there was mutual respect. Alston quietly coached his
players, trying to instill confidence. Leo's style was to belittle.
He was like the devil, using psychology to get within their heads,
and had an endless storage of knowledge about them that he used to
inflict maximum effect. He knew inside stuff about players' parents
and their personal lives, using it to embarrass or discredit. The
singled-out player would endure teammates' nervous laughter.
Anybody could be next.

Pitcher Johnny Podres said "there was conflict
because Leo wanted Walt's job - he wanted to manage the Dodgers."
Alston's dislike of Durocher was hard to hide. He never liked him,
going back to the two years when they managed against each other in
New York.