Casey Stengel

At 85 years old, Casey Stengel has this physical status:

Before reporting to spring training for the Blues in early 1910 at Excelsior Springs, Missouri, Stengel was approached by his neighbor, Kid Nichols, a former star pitcher, who advised him to listen to his manager and to the older players, and if he was minded to reject their advice, at least think it over for a month or so first. Stengel failed to make the ball club, which was part of the American Association, considered one of the top minor leagues. Kansas City optioned Stengel to the Kankakee Kays of the Class D Northern Association, a lower-level minor league, to gain experience as an outfielder. He had a .251 batting average with Kankakee when the league folded in July. He found a place with the Shelbyville Grays, who moved mid-season and became the Maysville Rivermen, of the Class D Blue Grass League, batting .221. He returned to the Blues for the final week of the season, with his combined batting average for 1910 at .237.

Uncertain of whether he would be successful as a baseball player, Stengel attended Western Dental College in the 1910–1911 offseason. He would later tell stories of his woes as a left-handed would-be dentist using right-handed equipment. The Blues sold Stengel to the Aurora Blues of the Class C Wisconsin–Illinois League. He led the league with a .352 batting average. Brooklyn Dodgers scout Larry Sutton took a trip from Chicago to nearby Aurora, noticed Stengel, and the Dodgers purchased his contract on September 1, 1911. Brooklyn outfielder Zach Wheat later claimed credit for tipping off Sutton that Stengel was worth signing. Stengel finished the season with Aurora and returned to dental school for the offseason.

The Dodgers assigned Stengel to the Montgomery Rebels of the Class A Southern Association for the 1912 season. Playing for manager Kid Elberfeld, Stengel batted .290 and led the league in outfield assists. He also developed a reputation as an eccentric player. Scout Mike Kahoe referred to Stengel as a "dandy ballplayer, but it's all from the neck down". After reporting to Brooklyn in September and getting a taste of the big leagues, he spent a third offseason at dental school in 1912–1913. He did not graduate, though whenever his baseball career hit a bad patch in the years to follow, his wife Edna would urge him to get his degree.

In later years, Casey Stengel told stories of his coming to Brooklyn to play for the Dodgers; most focused on his naïveté and were, at least, exaggerated. Wheat was from the Kansas City area and watched over Stengel, getting the young player a locker next to his and working with him on outfield technique. Stengel made his MLB debut at Brooklyn's Washington Park on September 17, 1912, as the starting center fielder, and went 4–4 with a walk, two stolen bases and two tie-breaking runs batted in, leading seventh-place Brooklyn to a 7–3 win over the Pirates. Stengel continued to play well, finishing the season with a .316 batting average, though hitting .351 when right-handers started against Brooklyn and only .250 when left-handers started.

After holding out for better pay, Stengel signed with the Dodgers for 1913. He won the starting center fielder job. The Dodgers had a new ballpark, Ebbets Field, and Stengel became the first person to hit a home run there, first an inside-the-park home run against the New York Yankees in an exhibition game to open the stadium, and then in the regular season. During the 1913 season, Stengel acquired the nickname "Casey"; there are varying stories of how this came to be, though his home town of Kansas City likely played a prominent role—sportswriter Fred Lieb stated that the ballplayer had "Charles Stengel—K.C." stenciled on his bags. Although he missed 25 games with injuries, he hit .272 with 7 official home runs in his first full season as a major leaguer. Prior to 1914 spring training, Stengel coached baseball at the University of Mississippi. Though the position was unpaid, he was designated an assistant professor for the time he was there, something that may have been the source of Stengel's nickname, "The Ol' Perfessor".

The Dodgers were an improving team in Stengel's first years with them, and he was greatly influenced by the manager who joined the team in 1914, Wilbert Robinson. Stengel also avoided a holdout in 1914; Dodgers owner Charlie Ebbets was anxious to put his players under contract lest they jump to the new Federal League, and nearly doubled Stengel's salary to $4,000 per year. During spring training, the Dodgers faced the minor league Baltimore Orioles and their rookie, Babe Ruth, who pitched. Ruth hit a triple over Stengel's head but gave up two doubles to him, and Stengel chased down a long Ruth fly ball to right in the Dodgers' loss. Both Brooklyn and Stengel started the season slowly, but both recovered with a hot streak that left the Dodgers only 4 games under .500, their best record since 1903, and Stengel finished with a .316 batting average, fifth best in the league. His on-base percentage led the league at .404, though this was not yet an official statistic. With the Federal League still active, Stengel was rewarded with a two-year contract at $6,000 per year.

Stengel reported to spring training ill and thin; he was unable to work out for much of the time the Dodgers spent in Florida. Although the team stated that he had typhoid fever, still common in 1915, Lieb wrote after Stengel's death in 1975 that the ballplayer had gonorrhea. Stengel may have been involved in a well-known incident during spring training when Robinson agreed to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane piloted by Ruth Law—except that it proved not to be a baseball, but a small grapefruit, much to the manager's shock, as he assumed the liquid on him was blood. Law stated that she dropped the grapefruit as she had forgotten the baseball, but Stengel retold the story, imitating Robinson, many times in his later years, with himself as grapefruit dropper, and is often given the credit for the stunt. Stengel's batting average dipped as low as the .150s for part of the season; though he eventually recovered to .237, this was still the worst full season percentage of his major league career.

Soon after the 1916 season started, it became clear that the Dodgers were one of the better teams in the league. Robinson managed to squeeze one more year of productivity out of some older veterans such as Chief Meyers, who said of Stengel, "It was Casey who kept us on our toes. He was the life of the party and just kept all us old-timers pepped up all season." Stengel, mostly playing right field, hit .279 with eight home runs, one less than the team leader in that category, Wheat. Stengel's home run off Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, who won 33 games that year, in the second game of a doubleheader on September 30, provided the margin of victory as the Dodgers went into first place to stay, qualifying for their first World Series, against the Boston Red Sox. Despite getting two hits in a Game 1 loss at Boston, Stengel was benched for Game 2 because the Red Sox were pitching a left-hander, Babe Ruth, and Stengel hit better against right-handers. Stengel, back in the lineup for Game 3, got a hit in Brooklyn's only victory of the series. He was benched again in Game 4 against left-hander Dutch Leonard, though he was inserted as a pinch runner, and got another hit in the Game 5 loss, finishing 4 for 11, .364, the best Dodger batting average of the Series.

Despite the successful season, Ebbets was determined to cut his players' salaries, including Stengel, whom he considered overpaid. By then, the Federal League was defunct, and the reserve clause prevented players from jumping to other major league clubs. The owner sent Stengel a contract for $4,600, and when that was rejected, cut it by another $400. A holdout ensued, together with a war of words waged in the press. With little leverage, Stengel became willing to sign for the original contract, and did on March 27, 1917, but missed most of spring training. Stengel's batting average dropped from .279 to .257 as the defending league champion Dodgers finished seventh in the eight-team league, but he led the team in games, hits, doubles, triples, home runs and runs batted in. After the season, Ebbets sent Stengel a contract for $4,100, and the outfielder eventually signed for that amount, but on January 9, 1918, Ebbets traded him along with George Cutshaw to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Burleigh Grimes, Al Mamaux and Chuck Ward.

The Pirates had been the only National League team to do worse than the Dodgers in 1917, finishing last. Stengel met with the Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss to seek a salary increase, but found Dreyfuss reluctant to deal until Stengel proved himself as a Pirate. On June 3, 1918, Stengel was ejected for arguing with the umpire, and was fined by the league office for taking off his shirt on the field. The U.S. had been fighting in World War I for a year, and Stengel enlisted in the Navy. His wartime service was playing for and managing the Brooklyn Navy Yard's baseball team, driving in the only run to beat Army, 1–0, before 5,000 spectators at the Polo Grounds. He also occasionally helped paint a ship—he later stated he had guarded the Gowanus Canal, and not a single submarine got into it.

The Armistice renewed the conflict between Stengel and Dreyfuss, and the outfielder held out again to begin the 1919 season. Both wanted to see Stengel traded, but no deal was immediately made. By then, Stengel's position as regular right fielder had been taken by Billy Southworth, and he had difficulty breaking back into the lineup. Stengel played better than he had before he enlisted, and by the time Dreyfuss traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies for Possum Whitted on August 9, he was batting .293 with four home runs. But before being traded, Stengel pulled one of his most famous stunts, on May 25 at Ebbets Field, as a member of the visiting Pirates. It was not unusual at Ebbets Field for right fielders of either team, rather than go to the dugout after three were out, to go to the Dodgers' bullpen, in foul territory down the right field line, if they were not likely to bat in the upcoming inning. Stengel did so to visit old friends, and discovered that pitcher Leon Cadore had captured a sparrow. Stengel took it, and quietly placed it under his cap when called to bat in the sixth inning. He received mixed boos and cheers from the Brooklyn crowd as a former Dodger, took a deep bow at the plate, and doffed his cap, whereupon the bird flew away to great laughter from the crowd.

The trade to the Phillies ended Stengel's major league season for 1919, as he refused to report unless he got a raise, and when one was not forthcoming, returned to Kansas City to raise a barnstorming team. In the offseason, he came to terms with William Baker, the owner of the Phillies, and hit .292 in 1920 with nine home runs. However, racked by injuries and no longer young for a ballplayer, he did not play much in the early part of the 1921 season. On June 30, 1921, the Phillies traded Stengel, Red Causey and Johnny Rawlings to the New York Giants for Lee King, Goldie Rapp and Lance Richbourg. The Giants were one of the dominant teams in the National League, and Stengel, who had feared being sent to the minor leagues, quietly placed a long-distance call once informed to ensure he was not the victim of a practical joke.

When Stengel reported to the Giants on July 1, 1921, they were managed, as they had been for almost 20 years, by John McGraw. Stengel biographer Robert W. Creamer said of McGraw, "his Giants were the most feared, the most respected, the most admired team in baseball". Stengel biographer Marty Appel noted, "McGraw and Stengel. Teacher and student. Casey was about to learn a lot about managing". Stengel had time to learn, playing in only 18 games for the Giants in 1921, mostly as a pinch hitter, and watched from his place on the bench as McGraw led the Giants from a 71⁄2 game deficit on August 24 to the National League pennant. Although he was on the 25-player postseason roster, Stengel did not appear in the 1921 World Series against the Yankees, as McGraw used only 13 players (4 of them pitchers) in beating the Yankees, five games to three. The only contribution Stengel made to the box score was being ejected from Game 5 for arguing.

McGraw brought several outfielders into spring training with the Giants. When Stengel was not included with the starters when the manager split the squad, some sportswriters assumed he would not be with the team when the regular season began. Stengel, at McGraw's request, acted as a coach to the young players on the "B" squad, and worked hard, getting key hits in spring training games, and making the Giants as a reserve outfielder. McGraw and Stengel sometimes stayed up all night, discussing baseball strategy. With two Giant outfielders injured by June, Stengel was put in center field, and hit .368 in 84 games, as McGraw platooned him against right-handers. If Stengel had enough plate appearances to qualify for the league batting championship, he would have finished second to Rogers Hornsby of the St. Louis Cardinals, who hit .401. The Giants played the Yankees again in the 1922 World Series; Stengel went 1–4 in Game 1, nursing an injured right leg muscle, which he aggravated running out an infield single in his first at bat in Game 2. Stengel was obviously limping when he was advanced to second base on another single, and McGraw sent in a pinch runner. He did not use Stengel again in the Series, which the Giants won, four games to zero, with one tie. After the Series, Stengel and other major leaguers went on a barnstorming tour of Japan and the Far East.

The year 1923 started much the same as the year before, with Stengel detailed to the "B" squad as player and coach in spring training, making the team as a reserve, and then inserted as center fielder when righties pitched. Similar also were Stengel's hot batting streaks, helping the Giants as they contended for their third straight pennant. Stengel was ejected several times for brawling or arguing with the umpire, and the league suspended him for ten games in one incident. McGraw continued to use him as a means of exerting some control over the younger players. During that summer, Stengel fell in love with Edna Lawson, a Californian who was running part of her father's building contracting business; they were married the following year. Near the end of the season, he sustained a mild foot injury, causing McGraw to rest him for a week, but he played the final two games of the regular season to finish at .339 as the Giants and Yankees each won their leagues.

Until 1923, the Yankees had been tenants of the Giants at the Polo Grounds, but had opened Yankee Stadium that year, and this was the site for Game 1 of the 1923 World Series on October 10. Casey Stengel's at bat in the ninth inning with the score tied 4–4 was "the stuff of legend", as Appel put it in his history of the Yankees. Before the largest crowd he had ever played before, Stengel lined a changeup from Joe Bush for a hit that went between the outfielders deep to left center. Hobbled by his injury and even more as a sponge inside his shoe flew out as he rounded second base, Stengel slowly circled the bases, and evaded the tag from catcher Wally Schang for an inside-the-park home run, providing the winning margin. Thus, the first World Series home run in old Yankee Stadium's history did not go to Babe Ruth, "that honor, with great irony, would fall to the aging reserve outfielder Casey Stengel".

After the Yankees won Game 2 at the Polo Grounds, the Series returned to Yankee Stadium for Game 3. Stengel won it, 1–0, on a home run into the right field bleachers. As the Yankee fans booed Stengel, he thumbed his nose at the crowd and blew a kiss toward the Yankee players, outraging the team's principal owner, Jacob Ruppert, who demanded that Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis fine or suspend Stengel. Judge Landis declined, saying "a man who wins two games with home runs may feel a little playful, especially if he's a Stengel". The Yankees won the next three games to take the Series; Stengel batted .417 in the six games, completing his World Series career as a player with a .393 batting average.

On November 13, 1923, twenty-nine days after the World Series ended, Stengel was traded to the perennial second-division-dwelling Boston Braves with Dave Bancroft and Bill Cunningham for Joe Oeschger and Billy Southworth. Stengel had enjoyed his time in New York and was initially unhappy at the trade, especially since he had become close to McGraw. He soon cooled down, and later praised McGraw as "the greatest manager I ever played for". Despite nagging pains in his legs, Stengel played in 134 games during the 1924 season, the most since his days with the Dodgers, and hit .280 with a team-leading 13 stolen bases, but the Braves finished last. After the season, Stengel joined a baseball tour of Europe organized by McGraw and Charles Comiskey, with Edna Stengel accompanying the team. Casey Stengel met King George V and the Duke of York, later to become King George VI; Edna sipped tea with Queen Mary, an experience that strained her nerves. That winter, the Stengels moved into a house built by Edna's father in Glendale, California, where they would live the rest of their lives. The marriage produced no children.

Early managerial career (1925–1948)

Stengel started 1925 on the active roster of the Braves, but was used as a pinch hitter and started only once, in right field against the Pirates on May 14, a game in which he got his only MLB hit of 1925, the final one of his major league career, a single. His average sank to .077. Braves owner Emil Fuchs purchased the Worcester Panthers of the Eastern League, and hired Stengel as player-manager and team president. Appel noted that in joining the Panthers, Stengel was "starting out on a managing career that would eventually take him to Cooperstown". With fans enjoying Stengel's on-field antics and his World Series heroics still recent, he was the Eastern League's biggest attendance draw. Between run-ins with the umpires, Stengel hit .302 in 100 games as the Panthers finished third.

The Panthers were not a box office success, and Fuchs planned to move the team to Providence, Rhode Island for the 1926 season, with Stengel to remain in his roles. McGraw, with whom Stengel had remained close, wanted him to take over as manager of the Giants' top affiliate, the Toledo Mud Hens of the American Association, at an increase in salary. Stengel was still under contract to the Braves, and Mud Hens president Joseph O'Brien was unwilling to send them money or players in order to get him. When Stengel asked Fuchs what to do if a higher-level club wanted to draft him, Fuchs half-heartedly suggested releasing himself as a player, which would automatically terminate his Braves contract. Stengel took up Fuchs on his suggestion, releasing himself as a player, then firing himself as manager and resigning as president, clearing the way for him to move to the Mud Hens. Fuchs was outraged, and went to Judge Landis, who advised him to let the matter go.

Stengel's six years in Toledo would be as long as he would spend anywhere as manager, except his time with the Yankees of the 1950s. McGraw sent talented players down to Toledo, and the Mud Hens threatened for the pennant in Stengel's first year before falling back to third. In 1927, the team won its first pennant and defeated the Buffalo Bisons, five games to one, in the Little World Series. Stengel missed part of the 1927 campaign, as he was suspended by the league for inciting the fans to attack the umpire after a close play during the first game of the Labor Day doubleheader. Stengel continued as an occasional player as late as 1931 in addition to his managerial role, hitting a game-winning home run (the last of his professional career) in 1927 for the Mud Hens. Since minor league clubs suffer large turnovers in their rosters, the team's success did not carry over to 1928, when it finished sixth, and then eighth in the eight-team league in 1929. The team recovered for third in 1930, but by then both Stengel and the team (in which he had invested) were having financial problems due to the start of the Great Depression. The team finished last again in 1931, and, after Landis was convinced no money had been skimmed off to benefit Stengel and other insiders, the team went into receivership, and Stengel was fired.

Stengel had approached the new manager of the Dodgers, Max Carey, an old teammate from his time with the Pirates, seeking a job, and was hired as first base coach. Stengel thus ended an exile of seven years from the major leagues: Appel suggested that Stengel's reputation as a clown inhibited owners from hiring him although he was known as knowledgeable and able to manage the press. Sportswriter Dan Daniel described Stengel's hiring as "the return of an ancient Flatbush landmark", which might satisfy old Dodger fans upset at Robinson's dismissal at the end of 1931. Brooklyn finished third and then sixth with Stengel in the first base coaching box. Among the players was catcher Al Lopez; the two became close friends and would be managing rivals in the 1950s American League.

During the winter following the 1933 season, the manager of the world champion Giants, Bill Terry was interviewed by the press about the other teams in the National League. When asked about the Dodgers, Terry responded, "Brooklyn? Gee, I haven't heard a peep out of there. Is Brooklyn still in the league?" This angered Brooklyn's management, and they expected Carey to make a full-throated response. When he remained silent, he was fired. One sportswriter regarded the hiring of Stengel as too logical a thing to happen in Brooklyn, but on February 24, 1934, Stengel faced the press for the first time as the manager of a major league team. McGraw, Stengel's mentor, was too ill to issue a statement on seeing him become a major league manager; he died the following day.

Stengel, hired only days before spring training, had a limited opportunity to shape his new ballclub. The Dodgers quickly settled into sixth place, where they would end the season. Stengel, in later years, enjoyed discussing one 1934 game in Philadelphia's Baker Bowl: with Dodger pitcher Boom-Boom Beck ineffective, Stengel went out to the mound to take out the angry pitcher, who, instead of giving Stengel the baseball, threw it into right field, where it hit the metal wall with a loud noise. The right fielder, Hack Wilson, lost in thought, heard the boom, assumed the ball had been hit by a batter, and ran to retrieve it and throw it to the infield, to be met by general laughter. Stengel got the last laughs on the Giants as well. The Giants, six games ahead of the Cardinals on Labor Day, squandered that lead, and with two games remaining in the season, were tied with St. Louis. The final two games were against Brooklyn at the Polo Grounds, games played in front of raucous crowds, who well remembered Terry's comments. Brooklyn won both games, while the Cardinals won their two games against the Cincinnati Reds, and won the pennant. Richard Bak, in his biography of Stengel, noted that the victories over the Terry-led Giants represented personal vindication for the Dodger manager.

The Dodgers finished fifth in 1935 and seventh in 1936. Dodger management felt Stengel had not done enough with the talent he had been given, and he was fired during the 1936 World Series between the Yankees and Giants. Stengel was paid for one year left on his contract, and he was not involved in baseball during the 1937 season. Stengel had invested in oil properties, as advised by one of his players, Randy Moore, a Texan; the investment helped make the Stengels well-to-do, and they put the profits in California real estate. Stengel considered going in the oil business full-time, but Braves president Bob Quinn offered him the Boston managerial job in late 1937, and he accepted.

Stengel was both manager and an investor in the Braves. In his six years there, 1938 to 1943, his team never finished in the top half of the league standings, and the Boston club finished seventh four straight years between 1939 and 1942, saved from last place by the fact that the Phillies were even worse. The entry of the United States in World War II meant that many top players went into the service, but for the Braves, the changeover made little difference in the standings. Among the young players to join the Braves was pitcher Warren Spahn, who was sent down to the minor leagues by the manager for having "no heart". Spahn, who would go on to a Hall of Fame career, much of it with the Braves, would play again for Stengel on the woeful New York Mets in 1965, and joke that he was the only person to play for Stengel both before and after he was a genius.

A few days before the opening of the 1943 season, Stengel was hit by a vehicle while crossing Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and he severely fractured a leg. He missed the first two months of the season, receiving many well-wishers, and reading get-well cards jokingly misaddressed to the hospital's psychiatric ward. For the rest of his life, Stengel walked with a limp. At the end of the season, Braves management, tired of minimal progress, fired Stengel, and he received no immediate job offers. Stengel testified about this part of his career before a Senate subcommittee fifteen years later, "I became a major league manager in several cities and was discharged. We call it discharged because there is no question I had to leave".

Stengel thought the 1943 season would be his last in baseball; Edna urged him to look after the family business interests full-time, and Casey, who had always been an athlete, was reluctant to show himself at a baseball stadium with the imperfectly healed injury. But early in the 1944 season, the minor-league Milwaukee Brewers had a managing vacancy to fill, as the Chicago Cubs had hired away the Brewer manager, Charlie Grimm, who had played with Stengel on the 1919 Pirates. Grimm told the Cubs he was obliged to see the Brewers had a competent replacement, and urged the Brewers to hire Stengel. The team owner, Bill Veeck, stationed as a Marine on Guadalcanal, thought ill of Stengel as a manager, and was very reluctant in his consent when reached by cable. Stengel was adept at fostering good relations with reporters, and the very talented team continued to win; by the end of May, Veeck had withdrawn his objections. The team won the American Association pennant, but lost in the playoffs to Louisville. Veeck, having returned to the United States, offered to rehire Stengel for 1945, but Stengel preferred another offer he received. This was from George Weiss of the New York Yankees, to manage the team Stengel had begun with, the Kansas City Blues, by then a Yankee farm club. Kansas City had finished last in the American Association as Milwaukee won the pennant, making it something of a comedown for Stengel, who hoped to return to the major leagues. Nevertheless, it was in his old home town, allowing him to see friends and relations, and he took the job. The Blues finished seventh in the eight-team league in 1945.

Although there was no major league managing vacancy Stengel could aspire to, the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League had fired their manager, and approached Stengel. The baseball played in the PCL was close to major league level, and the league featured many aging big leaguers finishing their careers. Also attractive to Stengel was that the league had three teams in Southern California, allowing him to spend more time at his home in Glendale. To that time, the club had won only one pennant, and was something of a weak sister to its crossbay rivals, the San Francisco Seals, but owner Brick Laws believed Stengel could mold the players into a winning team.

The Oaks finished second in the league behind the Seals in 1946, winning the first round of the playoffs against Los Angeles before losing to San Francisco in the finals. They finished fourth in 1947, beating San Francisco in the first round before losing to Los Angeles. Stengel managed the Oaks for a third year in 1948, with the roster heavy with former major leaguers. Among the younger players on the team was 20-year-old shortstop Billy Martin. Stengel was impressed by Martin's fielding, baseball acuity, and, when there were brawls on the field, fighting ability. The Oaks clinched the pennant on September 26, and defeated Los Angeles and the Seattle Rainiers to win the Governors' Cup. The Sporting News named Stengel the Minor League Manager of the Year.

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