Casey Stengel

Baseball Player

• Born: July 30, 1890
• Birthplace: Kansas City, Missouri
• Died: September 29, 1975
• Place of death: Glendale, California

Sport: Baseball

Early Life

Charles Dillon Stengel was born on July 30, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname “Casey” came from the city of his birth, which is often referred to as “K.C.” He was the third and last child of Jennie and Louis Stengel. His mother was of Irish descent and his father was of German ancestry. Casey’s father was an insurance agent, and his family enjoyed a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. Casey spent his childhood and adolescence in Kansas City. At Central High School, he played on the basketball, football, and baseball teams, but baseball was always his preferred sport.

The Road to Excellence

In 1909, Central High in Kansas City won the Missouri baseball tournament, and Casey was the winning pitcher in the championship game. The following year, he began his minor-league career in Kankakee, Illinois. After the 1910 season, he began attending Western Dental School in Kansas City, but he withdrew from dental school in order to resume his baseball career. Although he later became famous for his many practical jokes and for his convoluted but witty manner of speaking, called “Stengelese,” Casey was a very intelligent person.

After only two years in the minors, he was called up by the Brooklyn Dodgers and batted four for four in his first game in September, 1912. He played in the outfield; his major-league career lasting fourteen seasons. He had a respectable career batting average of .284. His most successful seasons were 1922 and 1923, when he batted .368 and .339, respectively, for the New York Giants, who played in the World Series in both years.

Casey had moments of greatness as a player. The high point of his career as a player took place during the first game of the 1923 World Series. In the ninth inning of this game against the Yankees, Casey broke a tie with a dramatic inside-the-park homer. In 1923, Casey met Edna Lawson, whom he married the following year. Casey and Edna had no children. Edna died in 1978, three years after Casey’s death.

The Emerging Champion

Although Casey Stengel played in the major leagues for fourteen seasons, his forty years as a manager constituted a much more significant contribution to the history of baseball. In 1925, Casey was thirty-five years old; he realized that his career as a player was ending, but he wanted to remain in baseball. In 1925, he became the player-manager for the Eastern League team in Worcester, Massachusetts. He earned a reputation as a skilled manager who knew how to develop the talents of young players. Between 1925 and 1948, Casey rarely had the opportunity to manage a truly competitive team in either the major or minor leagues. From 1934 to 1936, he managed the lowly Brooklyn Dodgers, and then he managed the equally weak Boston Braves from 1938 until 1943. Despite his best efforts, his Brooklyn and Boston teams never finished above fifth place.

In 1948, George Weiss, the general manager of the New York Yankees, hired Casey to manage the Yankees, who had fallen to third place in 1948. Hiring Casey struck many baseball reporters as an odd decision because Casey was then fifty-eight years old and had never enjoyed great success as a manager. George Weiss’s decision turned out to be brilliant. Casey managed the Yankees for twelve seasons, from 1949 until 1960. During these years with the Yankees, his team won ten American League pennants and seven World Series Championships. The Yankees won the World Series five years in a row between 1949 and 1953, a record never matched before or since. In 1960, however, the Yankees lost the World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates when Bill Mazeroski hit a ninth-inning homer in the seventh game to give Pittsburgh a dramatic victory. Just five days later, the owners of the Yankees fired Casey Stengel. His baseball career appeared to be finished.

Continuing the Story

Casey was then seventy years old, and no one would have imagined that the best was still to come for him. Just one year later, George Weiss, the first general manager of the newly created New York Mets, persuaded the Mets’ owner Joan Payson to hire Casey to manage her team. For three and one-half seasons, Casey managed the Mets, who were then the worst baseball team in the major leagues. Casey’s fine sense of humor and his sincere enthusiasm for his “Amazing Mets” created an extraordinary amount of good will for this expansion team, which won the World Series in 1969, four years after a broken hip forced Casey to retire permanently from baseball in the summer of 1965.

In 1966, the baseball writers decided to waive the requirement that a player wait five years before becoming eligible for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame so that Casey could be elected while he was still alive. A secret vote was taken, and he was inducted into the hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, on July 25, 1966, with Ted Williams. Casey was justly proud of his election. He even signed his letters “Casey Stengel, Hall of Famer.” Casey Stengel died from cancer on September 29, 1975, at the age of eighty-five, in Glendale, California.

Summary

Even many years after his death, Casey Stengel is remembered fondly by baseball fans as a creative manager who combined a fiercely competitive spirit with a wonderful sense of humor. He was magnanimous both in his years of triumph with the Yankees and during his losing seasons with the Mets. At Casey’s funeral, his former player Richie Ashburn said of Casey: “He was the happiest man I’ve ever seen.” This is an accurate assessment of Casey’s greatness.

Bibliography

Cataneo, David. Casey Stengel: Baseball’s “Old Professor.” Nashville, Tenn.: Cumberland House, 2003.

Creamer, Robert W. Stengel: His Life and Times. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.

Durso, Joseph. Casey and Mr. McGraw. St. Louis: Sporting News, 1989.

Goldman, Steven. Forging Genius: The Making of Casey Stengel. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005.

Koppett, Leonard. The Man in the Dugout: Baseball’s Top Managers and How They Got That Way. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.

Stengel, Casey, and Fred McMane. Quotable Casey: The Wit, Wisdom, and Wacky Words of Casey Stengel, Baseball’s “Old Perfesser” and Most Amazin’ Manager. Nashville, Tenn.: TowleHouse, 2002.

Stengel, Casey, and Harry T. Paxton. Casey at the Bat: The Story of My Life in Baseball. New York: Random House, 1962.