Casey Stengel

Quotes From Stengel
"Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in."

Played For
Brooklyn Dodgers (1912-1917)
Philadelphia Phillies (1920-1921)
New York Giants (1921-1923)
Boston Braves (1924-1925)

Managed
Brooklyn Dodgers (1934-1936)
Boston Braves (1938-1943)
New York Yankees (1949-1960)
New York Mets (1962-1965)

Casey's Best Year as a Manager
We'll pick 1960, because in that year - Casey's last in the Bronx - he did his most remarkable managing job. Juggling players, Stengel got at least 100 plate appearances for 13 different players. Only Roger Maris, Bill Skowron, and Mantle had good years by their standards. It was the season he earned this earlier compliment from Connie Mack - "I never saw a man who juggled his lineup so much and who played so many hunches so successfully." According to the pythagorean method, the Yanks should have won somewhere around 89 games - but Casey brought them in at 97 wins - and regained the AL Pennant. Offensively the team was built around the home run. On the mound, only one pitcher (Art Ditmar), won as many as 15 games, but the Yanks still finished second in ERA and had a strong bullpen led by Bobby Shantz, Luis Arroyo, Duke Maas, and Ryne Duren. Though they lost the World Series, they outscored the Bucs, losing on Mazeroski's famous home run in Game Seven. Stengel was dismissed in the off-season and responded with: "I'll never make the mistake of being 70 again."

The Anti-Yankees
In 1962, the Mets had their first game rained out...and the season pretty much went down hill from there. The team was a cobbled together group of ex-Dodgers and ex-Giants, meant to be more lovable than effective. It could not be said that, at a major league level, the 1962 Mets were competent at any single aspect of the game. They could not run, they could not hit or field, and they certainly could not pitch. They were lovable though. And fans from all five Boroughs packed into the Polo Grounds to see these "anti-Yankees." "Can't anybody here play this game?," manager Casey Stengel asked, and most often, the answer was no.

The hiring of Stengel was the brilliant stroke of the expansion Mets. They knew they were going to stink, and they knew that Stengel could translate those particular odors to the press in a way that would bring fans out anyway. "It's a great honor for me to join the Knickerbockers," he said at the first team press conference, as reporters looked up from their notebooks. Throughout the season, his remarks had that same befuddled spin on them. Was he serious? Was he kidding? Was he senile? He was a riot.

Already a NYC favorite after managing Brooklyn for nine years and the Yanks for another twelve, he'd been unceremoniously dumped by the Bronx Bombers in 1960. New Yorkers were clamoring for the return of Stengel, because they knew that if he couldn't win, he could bring his own head-scratching style to losing.

Here is a burst of classic Stengelese: "Well, we've got this Johnny Lewis in the outfield. They hit a ball to him yesterday, and he turned left, then he turned right, then he went straight back and caught the ball. He made three good plays in one."

Before the 1962 season, National League owners cast off their worst players in order to form two new teams --- the Houston Colt .45s and New York Mets. Each existing NL team left 15 players unprotected for an "expansion draft", and the new teams were allowed to take players at the then usurious cost of $75,000 per player. They were also allowed to take four "premium" players at double the original rate.

To give you an idea of how much the Colts and Mets were forced to overpay the owners already in power, here is a look at two of the "premium" players the Mets got in the draft: RHP, Jay Hook, age 26: His 11-19 record with the '60 Reds was his career year, he retired in '64 after going 12-34 over parts of three seasons with the Amazin's.

RHP, Bob Miller, age 23: Miller was a career 9-9 pitcher who had pitched fairly well for the Cardinals in relief. Miller went on to pitch for a total of 17 big-league years, accumulating a 69-81 record, with a completely average ERA. He was the "find" of the expansion draft. To hammer the point home, Don Zimmer, a career .235 hitter, was a "premium" player in the 1962 expansion draft, and since he'd been a Brooklyn Dodger, the Mets picked him up, too. Their first pick overall, though -- and therefore the first Met -- was catcher Hobie Landrith, taken during the not-so-premium part of the affair. Hobie's career average was .233, and he'd been a full-time catcher in only one of his previous eleven seasons, but manager Casey Stengel summed the situation up neatly: "You start with a catcher," he explained, "Or you'll have a lot of passed balls."

The rest of the team was fleshed out with has-been's, never-were's, and ex-New York City players: Gil Hodges, Roger Craig, Charlie Neal, and Gus Bell. They also picked up a slugger, Frank Thomas (whose 34 dingers placed him sixth in the league, yet still stood as a Met record for 13 years), and a former superstar in outfielder Richie Ashburn. When his legs would let him play, he was still good enough to get on base, and he was still popular enough to fill a few thousand seats per night, win or lose.

The Mets were all set to open versus the Cardinals on April 10th, but their first loss was postponed by rain. The next day, they played. Former Dodgers Gil Hodges and Charlie Neal came through with homers, but former Dodger Roger Craig was shellacked, and didn't make it past the fourth inning. The Mets lost, 11-4. The three relief pitchers Stengel used that night (Clem Labine, Herb Moford, and Bob Moorhead) were all released within the month. They lost the next eight in a row, having been outscored 74-22 during that initial 0-9 run. When they won their first game, the next day, on a complete game five-hitter by the immortal Jay Hook, they cracked open champagne and celebrated like pennant winners. It probably was the high point of the season. They went 40-120 over the course of the season, and were probably the worst team in baseball history, though the 1899 Cleveland Spiders deserve a share of the title.

The '62 Mets only had one player atop the individual leaderboards: Losses, Roger Craig, 24. And he was their best pitcher. — Kirk Robinson

Casey's "Nine Old Men"
Managing the Oakland Oaks in the Pacific Coast League in 1948, Casey Stengel won the pennant on the final day of the season. His team was an interesting mixture of former big leaugers, minor league veterans, and young players on their way to the majors. But because most of the key performers were older than their competition in the PCL, Casey's team was dubbed "The Nine Old Men."

Included on the team was former All-Star catcher Ernie Lombardi, 40 years old and in his first season out of the majors. 41-year old Southpaw Thornton Lee, with 117 big league victories to his credit, was on Casey's staff. Also on the staff was "Abba Dabba" Jim Tobin, a nine-year major league veteran, retired in Oakland. Cookie Lavagetto, an infielder primarily for the Dodgers in a ten-year career, served as a player/coach, seeing action alongside the brazen Billy Martin, who would one day play under Stengel in the pinstripes of the Yankees. Two other key pitchers on his staff were Charley Gassaway, a career minor leaguer who won nearly 150 games in the bushes, and Floyd Speer, who spent all but a handful of games in the minors in a career that spanned three decades.

The following season, Stengel was hired to manage the Yankees in a surpise move, replacing Bucky Harris. Stengel would win pennants in his first five seasons at the helm of the Yankees, extending his own streak to six.

Where He Played
Outfield

Born
Charles Dillon Stengel was born on July 30, 1890, in Kansas City, MO.

Died
September 29, 1975, Glendale, CA

Batted:  Left
Threw:  Left

Primary Position:  OF

Primary Team:  BRO

Major League Debut
September 17, 1912

Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1912
Rabbit Maranville
Cy Williams
Del Pratt
Bobby Veach
Ray Schalk
Casey Stengel
Buck Weaver
Ray Chapman
Herb Pennock

Nicknames
The Old Perfessor

Similar Players
As a player, Billy Southworth and Cleon Jones; as a manager, Sparky Anderson.

Related Players
John McGraw, Bill Cunningham, Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Don Larsen, Yogi Berra, Ralph Houk, Johnny Keane

Hall of Fame Voting Year Election Votes Pct 1938 BBWAA 2 .8% 1939 BBWAA 6 2.2% 1945 BBWAA 2 .8% 1949 BBWAA 3 2.0% 1950 BBWAA 3 1.8% 1951 BBWAA 8 3.5% 1952 BBWAA 27 11.5% 1953 BBWAA 61 23.1% 1966 Veterans %

Post-Season Appearances
1916 World Series
1922 World Series
1923 World Series

Best Strength as a Player
Stengel was a pitcher's manager at heart - even though few of his hurlers liked him much...he once said, "It's high time something was done for the pitchers. They put up the stands and take down fences to make more home runs and plague the pitchers. Let them revive the spitter and help the pitchers make a living." He also was quoted as saying, "Nobody ever had too many of them (pitchers)."

Learn More about Casey Stengel
Search Amazon.com for Books about Casey Stengel ⇒
Search for Casey Stengel at Google ⇒
View a map of his hometown at Mapquest ⇒