Walter Alston

Walter Emmons Alston appeared in one major league game as a player, struck out on three pitches, and then managed the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers for 23 seasons on 23 consecutive one-year contracts, winning 2,040 games, seven pennants, and four World Series championships. The New York Daily News greeted his hiring with the headline "Walter Who?" and the question followed him for exactly one answer. "Do your best and forget the consequences," Alston said. Jim Murray wrote that Alston was "the only guy in the game who could look Billy Graham right in the face without blushing and who would order corn on the cob in a Paris restaurant." Murray also wrote that black players who could spot a closet bigot recognized immediately that Alston "didn't know what prejudice was." The Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1983, but a heart attack kept him from attending the ceremony, and his grandson accepted the honor in his place.

Venice

Alston was born on December 1, 1911, in Venice, Ohio, to Emmons Alston, a farmer, and Lenora Neanover. Friends called him "Smokey" for the fastball he threw as a young pitcher, though Alston told an interviewer he earned the name bouncing a ball off a barn door when his father was unavailable to play catch. Alston attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he lettered in basketball and baseball for three years and financed his education by driving a laundry truck, working the cafeteria, and playing pool. After graduating he taught high school science and coached basketball, and he continued teaching during the off-seasons of his early managing career.

Alston played 13 minor league seasons as a first baseman and hit .295 with 176 home runs. On September 27, 1936, the St. Louis Cardinals called him up for a single game after Johnny Mize was ejected. Frankie Frisch sent Alston to first base, and Alston struck out on three pitches against Lon Warneke of the Chicago Cubs. He played two innings in the field behind Dizzy Dean and committed one error. Alston never appeared in the majors again.

Nashua

Branch Rickey hired Alston to manage in the Dodgers system in 1944, and the partnership produced the most important moment of Alston's pre-Brooklyn career. In 1946, Rickey assigned him to the Nashua Dodgers of the New England League, where Alston managed Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella on what became the first integrated professional baseball team based in the United States, one year before Jackie Robinson's Brooklyn debut. Alston won the league championship at Nashua, then kept winning wherever the Dodgers sent him. He took the Western League title at Pueblo in 1947, the Junior World Series at St. Paul in 1949, and two International League pennants at Montreal, compiling a 544-373 record across four years of Triple-A ball before the Dodgers finally promoted him.

When Walter O'Malley declined to renew Charlie Dressen's contract after the 1953 season, he hired Alston, who had zero major league experience as a player or coach. The Daily News ran the "Walter Who?" headline on November 25, 1953. Robinson said the team "might be moving somewhere if Alston had not been standing at third base like a wooden Indian," though Robinson later came to respect him. Walter O'Malley described his reasoning in a 1969 interview with characteristic simplicity. "Non-irritating," he said. "Do you realize how important it is to have a manager who doesn't irritate you?"

Brooklyn and Los Angeles

Alston won the 1955 World Series in his second season, giving Brooklyn its only championship with a Game 7 victory over the Yankees. The Dodgers won the pennant again in 1956, moved to Los Angeles in 1958, and won the World Series in 1959 against the White Sox. In 1963 the Dodgers swept the Yankees in four games, the first time the Yankees had been swept in a World Series. In 1965 Alston chose Sandy Koufax over Don Drysdale to start Game 7 against the Twins, and Koufax threw a shutout on two days' rest. The Dodgers won the pennant again in 1966 and in 1974, giving Alston seven pennants and four championships across his tenure.

Koufax and Drysdale spent their entire major league careers under Alston's management. Alston never raised his voice, never held a grudge, and never criticized a player publicly. "I never criticized a player for a mistake on the spot," he said. "Whenever I got steamed up about something, I always wanted to sleep on it and face the situation with a clear head." In 23 years he had only four losing seasons and won 90 or more games ten times.

Oxford

Alston managed his final game on September 28, 1976, a 1-0 loss to Houston. Tommy Lasorda took over for the final four games of the season and then replaced him permanently. The Dodgers retired Alston's number 24 in 1977. Alston suffered a heart attack in 1983 and never fully recovered. He died on October 1, 1984, at a hospital in Oxford, Ohio, at 72, and was buried at Darrtown Cemetery near the farm where he grew up. The town of Darrtown erected a statue in his honor in 2000, and Ohio renamed State Route 177 the Walter "Smokey" Alston Memorial Highway.