For He's A Jolly Good Fellow

Stoneham would not forget a thing like that. Stoneham would understand that Dark, like himself, is a man who will protect his own.

All things considered, Alvin was a good enough manager. He eked out the 1962 pennant, and if he never got the team together again he was at least able to keep them in a respectable position. Stoneham and Dark lived their own lives by their own lights and met only to discuss the ball club. The owner's admiration for his manager remained undiminished.

And then the one thing happened that no one, in his wildest dreams, would have considered. If you had taken a poll to guess how a break between the owner and manager would finally come, nobody could possibly have come out a winner. What happened? Not much, really—just that Horace Stoneham came to believe Alvin Dark had developed a flaw in that faultless character of his. Not on Stoneham's terms, but on Dark's own stern terms, which prohibited all diversions, however innocuous, even a cigarette. O.K., big deal. You and I would have chuckled. Not Horace. Horace reacted as if it were a personal affront—even an act of disloyalty. At that moment Alvin was no longer the genuine article, the real McCoy.

Human nature being what it is, the final act in the comedy was inevitable. Once Horace thought there was a flaw, one single minor flaw, in Alvin's character, he was suddenly set free to judge not only the man but the manager. If Horace thought that Alvin was not the man he seemed to be, maybe he was not the manager he seemed to be either.

Where Horace had, for once in his life, refrained from second-guessing his manager, he now looked for flaws in everything Dark did. And let me tell you, once you look for flaws in a manager, any manager, you are going to find them in abundance. Where previously Dark as a manager could do no wrong, he now could do no right.

The final step came when the special dispensation that had been given to Dark was canceled. If Clancy Sheehan was a character, at least he pretended to be nothing else. And when the boss said "sitsee," Clancy sat and Clancy drank. All right, if Clancy Sheehan and Alvin Dark were brothers under the skin, then Alvin Dark would sitsee and Alvin Dark would drink too.

Well, Alvin wasn't coming up to the boss's suite to drink. He was still not going to base a relationship on Stoneham's terms, and Stoneham was no longer willing to let it stand on Alvin's terms. Communication between the owner and manager practically ground to a stop. Win or lose, Alvin was through.

It got so chilly up there by San Francisco Bay that if it had not been for all the commotion kicked up by that New York interview, Horace would undoubtedly have fired Dark before the end of the season.

To anybody except Stoneham, of course, the interview would have provided the perfect out for firing Dark. It would even have made him a hero in some quarters. It is typical of Horace that, given every logical reason to seize upon that excuse, he refused to take it.

For, as you know by now, Stoneham does not go that route. If he was going to fire Alvin, it was not going to be under false pretenses. He would stand by his manager loyally on that one issue and let him go as quietly as possible at the end of the season.