Al Lopez and a young Tony LaRussa

Al Lopez, one of baseball's most prominent managers of the 1950s and the oldest member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, died Sunday in Tampa, Florida. He was 97 and had briefly returned to the spotlight last month when the Chicago White Sox franchise he managed to a pennant in 1959 finally returned to the World Series.

His death was announced by his son, Al Lopez Jr., who said his father had been hospitalized since having a heart attack on Friday, The Associated Press reported.

The elder Lopez once held the major league record for most games played as a catcher - 1,918 in 19 seasons. But he was best remembered for managing the 1954 Cleveland Indians and the 1959 White Sox to American League pennants in an era when the Yankees dominated baseball.

"I read where I'm anti-Yankee," Lopez once told The New York Journal-American. "I'm anti any club that wins all the time."

Lopez's Cleveland and Chicago teams finished second nine times to Yankee teams. Seven times he was runner-up to Yankee clubs managed by Casey Stengel, who was Lopez's manager with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves in the 1930s.

Lopez managed the 1954 Indians to a league-record 111 victories and managed the 1959 White Sox to their first pennant victory since 1919, the year of the Black Sox World Series fix. When the White Sox reached the World Series last month - going on to sweep the Houston Astros - Lopez was sought for interviews to tell of the stars he molded on the 1959 White Sox team.

"We had a lot of fun," he said. "This club has a little more hitting."

Lopez's teams won 1,422 games and lost 1,026 in 17 seasons for a winning percentage of .581. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977 by its Veterans Committee. His hometown honored him in the 1950s, naming the Tampa ballpark Al Lopez Field.

Lopez was a low-key type, his Spanish heritage and his persona leading him to be known in the press as a caballero, or a gentleman.

"He was very fair," Jim Rivera, an outfielder for the 1959 White Sox, told The Associated Press on Sunday from his home in Fort Wayne, Indiana. "If you did something good, he would compliment you. If you struck out or made an error, he wouldn't say a word as long as you hustled and worked hard."

Alfonso Ramon Lopez was born Aug. 20, 1908, in Tampa, a son of immigrants from Spain who went to Cuba, then settled in Tampa's Spanish-speaking Ybor City section.

One of Lopez's earliest memories was of the odor of cigar smoke in the factory where his father, Modesto, worked as a tobacco selector. "I hated it," he said. "I vowed never to work in one."

At age 16, Lopez quit school to play for the Tampa Smokers of the Florida State League.

He made his debut in the majors with Brooklyn at the end of the 1928 season and soon gained a reputation as a savvy handler of pitchers.

Lopez remembered how Stengel, the Dodgers' manager, told him after the 1935 season that he might be dealt. "If I trade you, it's going to be to a good club, a contender," he quoted Stengel as saying in an interview with Donald Honig for "The Man in the Dugout."

As Lopez recalled it: "He ended up trading me to Boston, who the year before had set a league record by losing 115 games. Then a few years later, he comes over to Boston to manage and trades me to Pittsburgh."

Lopez was a two-time National League All-Star and twice hit more than .300 as a regular. He had a career batting average of .261, playing for the Dodgers, the Boston Braves, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Indians.

He began his managing career with Indianapolis of the American Association in 1948, then succeeded Lou Boudreau as manager of the Indians in 1951.

Stengel's Yankees won the American League pennant every season from 1949 through 1964 except for the times when Lopez's Indians and White Sox took the title.

After his Indians finished second from 1951 to 1953, Lopez beat out the Yankees with a superb pitching rotation led by Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and Mike Garcia. But the Indians were swept by the New York Giants in a World Series remembered for Willie Mays's spectacular catch of a drive by Vic Wertz and for the slugging of the unheralded Dusty Rhodes.

After his teams finished second to the Yankees the next two seasons, Lopez left the Indians to manage the White Sox.

Lopez's White Sox teams finished second to the Yankees in 1957 and 1958. But in 1959, Lopez topped the Yankees with the Go-Go Sox, who relied on speed and fine fielding, sparked by two future Hall of Fame infielders, Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox. Lopez was beaten in the World Series again, this time when the White Sox lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games.

Lopez remained as the White Sox manager through 1965, then took an advisory post with the team. When his successor, Eddie Stanky, quit in mid-July 1968, Lopez returned as manager. He stayed on until the following May 2, when he retired because of a stomach illness.

Alfonso R Lopez