By M. KAREN BREWER

     "I was raised with a ball and glove in my hand,” said baseball great Alvin Dark. “When my teachers would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, every time I’d say, ‘a professional baseball player.’” 
   The sport of baseball was in his family’s blood. His father was a semi-professional baseball player, and his older brother played in the Minor Leagues. 
   Dark’s career in the Major Leagues began with the Boston Braves, after he came out of the service in 1946 at the age of 24, and spanned nearly three decades as a player and manager. “I broke in with the Boston Braves (1946, 1948-1949) and played with them for two years, was traded to the New York Giants (1950-1956) and played with them for almost seven years,” he said. “With those two ball clubs, we won three pennants and one world championship. God put me in a lot of positions where I was getting more notoriety. And because I was playing in real good ball clubs, I was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals (1956-1958), the Chicago Cubs (1958-1959), the Philadelphia Phillies (1960), and back to the Braves (1960), which at that time were in Milwaukee.”
   Dark played for 14 years in Major League Baseball, from 1946 to 1960. (After being assigned to a AAA team for a year, he then became Rookie of the Year in 1948.) His lifetime batting average is .289. In his baseball career, he had 358 doubles and 126 home runs. 
   He managed in the Major Leagues for 14 years, beginning with the San Francisco Giants (1961-1964) and winning the pennant in 1962. He then managed the Kansas City A’s (1966-1967), the Cleveland Indians (1968-1971), the Oakland A’s (1974-1975), and the San Diego Padres (1977). The Oakland A’s won the World Series in 1974 under his leadership. 
   Dark’s sports passion these days is golf, which he began playing in 1941, as a freshman at Louisiana State University. An LSU football player sold him some clubs for $20, and he began playing on the LSU golf course in the afternoons after classes. After he entered the Major Leagues, he would play golf in the off-season, to keep himself in shape in winter. He began competing in tournaments, which he still does today, including the annual Alvin Dark Foundation Golf Tournament, which benefits Christian ministries. 
   He values a golf lesson he once received from Jack Grout, who taught the game to golf legend Jack Nicklaus, and who instructed Dark to hit the ball toward a cloud. “My swing would then hit the ball straighter and higher,” said Dark. “That’s all he told me, but he didn’t charge me anything for it. He said, ‘That’s the theory of hitting a golf ball. If you see how high you can hit it, you can hit it straighter.’” 
   Dark doesn’t have to go far to satisfy his passion, for his ‘backyard’ is a golf course. He and his wife, Jackie, have lived at Smithfields Country Club since moving to Easley, South Carolina in 1983. “I consider Easley home,” said the Oklahoma native who grew up in Texas and Louisiana and lived in other parts of the country during his baseball career. “It’s the greatest move we’ve ever made.” 
   Since February 13, 2005 (Jackie’s birthday), the Darks have been members of Rock Springs Baptist Church in Easley. “We have a preacher that God has gifted,” he said of the church’s Pastor, Dr. David Gallamore. “We go to his Sunday School class, also, and he is a great teacher of the Word. He is also a great preacher of the Word and a great soul winner. His wife, Shirley, is a gorgeous singer, and she sings in the choir. They do a great work there.” 
   Their Christian faith is important to the Darks. Jackie has led a ladies Bible study since September 11, 2001 at the Pickens YMCA and is a sought-after speaker at ladies’ events in churches across the country. Alvin also shares his faith when he speaks in churches, and he uses his baseball notoriety to his advantage in order to give his testimony and share the Good News of Jesus Christ. 
   “Our being saved is strictly what Christ did at the cross,” he said. “Ephesians 2:8-9 says, For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. 
   “My most important thing in life is to share God’s Word,” he said. “Because I’m a former Big League baseball player and manager, a lot of people will listen to me in a church. Every so often, someone will tell me that he got saved in one of my services, all because he came to see what the old baseball player was going to say. All I do is give them God’s Word. I don’t take credit for anybody getting saved through my words. I’m telling people what the Scripture has meant to me and how it has changed my life.” His favorite Scripture includes II Timothy 3:16, II Peter 1:21, and I Corinthians 2:9-14. “All of those verses tell you that God’s Word is perfect,” he said. 
   The Darks have been speaking and sharing their faith since rededicating their lives to the Lord in 1971. “We promised the Lord we would serve him whether we went back into baseball or not,” he said. “God put us back into baseball, and, because of our commitment to Him, we started studying the Bible more. This is when my life changed, when I realized that the only thing that matters is what we do for the Lord. We promised the Lord that, if we went back into baseball, we would do the best job we could do in baseball, because, when you become a Christian, and you accept Christ as your personal Saviour, you represent Him in everything you do. Because you’re a Christian doesn’t mean that you don’t care about winning. You want to win more, because you represent Christ. I took back into baseball all of the things I learned in God’s Word. There are a lot of things we don’t understand, but we appreciate everything that God has in His Book to help us live the Christian life.”