Casey Stengel Biography - Young Athlete, "casey At The Bat", Clown And Hero, Shifting Ball Clubs, Managing The Yankees - SELECTED WRITINGS BY STENGEL:
baseball manager league age
1890-1975
American baseball manager
Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel is a legendary figure in baseball, as well known for his comedic talent and long-winded, convoluted way of speaking, called "Stengelese," as for his gift for managing some of the best and worst baseball teams in U.S. history. He led the New York Yankees to ten American League pennants and seven World Series championships between 1949 and 1960, working with such superstars as Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Roger Maris. Stengel started the Yankees' "instructional school," a training camp that soon came to be emulated by other major league teams. He also developed an intricate system of "platooning" his players to get the most from his roster. At age 72, two years after the Yankees let him go, he took on the management of the newly created New York Mets. Although the team won only 194 games and lost 452 during Stengel's four years as manager, the bumbling new team drew many fans to the stadium, thanks to Stengel's sense of humor and ability to entertain a crowd. After a lifetime in baseball, "the Old Perfesser," as Stengel had come to be known, retired at age 75 after he suffered a broken hip. The Baseball Writers Association of America voted to waive the five-year waiting period and named Stengel to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.
Casey Stengel
SELECTED WRITINGS BY STENGEL:
(With Harry Paxton) Casey at the Bat: The Story of My Life in Baseball, Random House, 1961.
Additional Topics
Stengel was soon called up to Brooklyn to play. Because he talked so much about Kansas City, he earned the nickname "K.C.," which became "Casey" after Ernest Thayer's popular poem "Casey at the Bat." By 1914 the press had passed the nickname on to all the fans. During this period, Stengel also earned another nickname that would stick with him in lat…
During a Pirates game against the Dodgers in 1919, Stengel entertained the fans with what became a famous stunt. While sitting in the dugout he acquired a sparrow and put it under his cap. At bat, he tipped his cap to the crowd, releasing the bird and delighting the fans. In 1920, after he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, he repeated the trick, among other antics, including popping up from…
Over the next twenty-five years, Stengel moved from team to team, first as a player and then as a coach and manager. At the end of the 1923 season he was traded to the Boston Braves, then called the Bees, and played right field throughout 1924. During that year he married Edna Lawson, an accountant from Glendale, California, whom he had met at a baseball game. They made their home in Glendale and …
When old friend and admirer George Weiss, who had taken over general management of the New York Yankees, called on Stengel to manage the team in 1949, he accepted, saying at a press conference, "This is a big job, fellows, and I barely have had time to study it. In fact, I scarcely know where I am at." Conservative Yankee business staffers winced when the press ran a photo of Stengel…
In 1962, at age 72, Stengel was called on to manage the new Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York, better known as the Mets. On accepting the position, Stengel said, "Most people my age are dead at the present time." Drumming up support for his new team, he announced, "Come see my amazin' Mets!" and the name stuck. The 1962 Mets became known as the worst basebal…
Stengel spent some of his retirement years at work in a Glendale bank, with a sign on his desk that read "Stengelese Spoken Here." In the fall of 1975, as he lay in a hospital bed watching baseball on television, he reportedly got to his feet one last time to stand at attention as they played the national anthem, with his right hand over his heart. He died of a form of lymphatic canc…
On March 8 [1966], a few days after he had arrived in Florida, the Mets asked Casey to come out to the spring training field to take part in a ceremony. The sportswriters were giving a plaque to George Weiss, he was told, and they wanted Casey to make the presentation. They told him to bring Edna along, too. Stengel, wielding his cane, limped onto the field and walked with surprising quickness tow…
Creamer, Robert W. Stengel: His Life and Times. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Vol. 19. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Koppett, Leonard. The Man in the Dugout: Baseball's Top Managers and How They Got That Way. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. "Dustbin." Sporting News (November 6, 2000): 8. Frayne, Trent. "'…
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