Word: alston
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...winter. That old horse-trader Gene Mauch will probably wish he never picked up the phone during the off-season. The Montreal skipper dealt away his whole franchise (with the exception of super-star Ken Singleton) when he sent Mike Marshall to the Dodgers for Willie Davis. While Walt Alston is busy smacking his lips, Mauch will have to depend on a staff that makes even Atlanta's hurlers look good, and that's bad news for die-hard Expo fans...
...newcomers that seem formfitted for their needs. Catcher Joe Ferguson has the kind of cleanup power that evokes memories of Campanella. Second Baseman Dave Lopes is hitting a lusty .298 and has stolen 28 bases. And after trying 42 aspirants at third base over the past 15 years, Alston seems to have finally found a winner in Ron Cey, a stocky, sure-gloved fielder who has driven in 55 runs. Along with Shortstop Bill Russell, a third-year converted outfielder who has finally shaken a case of the fumbles that plagued him in 1972, Lopes and Cey have helped plug...
...Angeles roster-and Alston's penchant for juggling lineups-is so strong that few if any players are considered regulars. Says Don Sutton, the mainstay of a pitching staff that owns the lowest earned-run average (2.87) in the league: "Alston reminds us all in spring training that he's managing for 25 players, not one. He never forgets it, and he makes sure you don't either...
...Alston is still very much the sharecropper's son from Darrtown (pop. 300), Ohio, who used to ride a pony bareback to school. In the off-season he and his wife Lela return to their modest home in Darrtown, where, he says, "I can stand in my back door and shoot chicken hawks off the fence." His winters are spent bird hunting, skeet shooting, playing bridge, woodworking, shooting pool and riding his five-gaited horses with his two grandchildren. "They never took the country out of this boy," he says proudly. "I wouldn't trade my off-season...
...baseball, he says that "as long as I feel well, I can't think of anything I'd rather do." On the threshold of what may well be another Dodger dynasty, Alston has all the job security he needs-despite the fact that for the past 20 seasons he has signed only one-year contracts. Now earning a reported $70,000 a year, he says that he shares the feeling of Dodger Owner Walter O'Malley. "As Walter said the day I got the first assignment in Brooklyn," says Alston, "signing one-year contracts can mean...