Years later in the 1940s, for example, when Casey began managing the Yankees, many of his stars were breaking curfew, knowing that their manager, their elder by thirty-plus years, was not going to stay up to the wee hours to catch them. Casey devised a different strategy. When he went to bed on the road, he tipped the hotel elevator operator, gave him a new baseball, and told him to ask for the autographs of each player who came in after midnight. The hotel operator left the evidence for Casey at the front desk in the morning.
Casey was wily, fearless, and daring and in Oakland in 1947, not too old or too afraid to punch someone in the nose if he thought he deserved it.
Still a teen, Billy looked at Casey and probably saw a reflection of himself. So he inched forward for a closer look until he was at Casey’s side at all times.
In Billy, Stengel no doubt saw the son he never had. This probably did not happen immediately, since it was only a year earlier that he had described Billy as “that ragamuffin.” But Casey was nonetheless drawn to Billy, seeing some of himself in the charming if raffish youngster. The marriage of Casey and the former Edna Lawson, which would last fifty-one years, produced no children. And Casey had no nieces or nephews in his family either. Slowly, Casey warmed to Billy, alternatively scolding him and throwing his arm around him as a parent would. To his face he called him “Kid,” and to others Billy was “that kid.”
Around the Oakland Oaks, Billy was soon dubbed “Casey’s boy,” a term that stuck.
Stengel believed in players like Billy, whose effect on baseball games could not be summed up in statistics or completely grasped by watching him swing a bat or field ground balls in practice. Casey looked at Billy and saw not just his raw resolve but his knowing faith that the game was played at various levels that few recognized, be they physical, mental, or spiritual. He saw in Billy the zeal to know and master it all and to let baseball take over his life until it took him everywhere he ever wanted to go.
Because that is how Casey saw his life. Baseball had done much for him already, and somehow, at fifty-seven, it was as if he was just getting started again. As Stengel would later say, summing up any number of memorable moments, “There comes a time in a man’s life, and I’ve had plenty of them.”
As with most Casey-isms, it sounded like a joke, but it was not.
Charles Dillon Stengel was born on July 30, 1890, in Kansas City, hence his nickname as a ballplayer (derived from K.C.). After high school he began driving a cab for pay for his tuition at Western Dental College. An outfielder who batted and threw left-handed, he augmented his income by playing a summer of minor league professional baseball for the teams in Kankakee, Illinois, of the Northern Association and Maysville, Kentucky, in the Blue Grass League.
In his autobiography, Stengel wrote of Maysville, “I was full of fire and vinegar and practiced my sliding into third, second or first base on my way to and from the dugout between innings. There was a lunatic asylum behind center field and the people out there used to applaud my slide more than home runs. They must have recognized a kindred soul.”
By the summer of 1911, Casey had moved on to the team in Aurora, Illinois, and he was struggling with his dental studies in part because he could not afford left-handed dental instruments. By chance, a Brooklyn Dodgers scout spotted Casey in Aurora. Three hundred dollars later Stengel was a Brooklyn farmhand, and one year later he was playing in Brooklyn. He had four hits in his first home game, and the Brooklyn fans took a liking to the plucky Stengel, who smiled at fans in the stands and carried on conversations with them as he roamed the outfield. He was daring and boisterous, swaggering his way around the bases and calling attention to himself whenever he could. When the veterans on other teams told him to tone down his act, Stengel told them to shove it and tried to think of something more ostentatious he could do to get under their skin.
He got away with his theatrics because he was a solid player, twice batting over .300 for the Dodgers, and he hit .364 during their 1916 loss to the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. When Ebbets Field opened in 1913, Stengel hit the first home run in the ballpark. Traded to Pittsburgh because of a contract dispute, he continued to play well, although World War I and the U.S. Navy intervened briefly. Returning to Brooklyn for a Sunday game in 1919, Casey struck out twice and misplayed a fly ball. The fans of his old team were jeering him mercilessly. On his way to the bench at the end of the sixth inning, he saw a teammate holding a small sparrow he had captured in the bullpen. Casey put the bird under his cap and held it there. As he approached home plate during the top of the seventh—without television commercial breaks, one inning in 1919 followed another inning very quickly—the Brooklyn fans booed. Casey tipped his cap and out flew the sparrow. If they were going to give him the bird, he could give them one, too. Brooklyn’s baseball fans cheered Casey anew.
By 1922, Stengel was with the New York Giants, whose crusty manager, John McGraw, loved the hard-driving style of his new outfielder. Stengel was now thirty-one years old and a bit worn out from eleven years on the road. Baseball players in the early part of the twentieth century were a hard-drinking, brawling lot—the best hotels would often refuse to lodge them, treating them like circus performers. Casey was at home in a bar like any other player and wondering how many years he had left. McGraw platooned the left-handed-hitting Casey with another outfielder, the right-handed Bill Cunningham, and while Casey did not like his part-time status, he saw the benefits. Casey hit .368 in 1922 facing right-handed pitchers and Cunningham batted .328 facing the lefties. The wisdom of the system stuck with Casey for decades.
Casey also watched McGraw carefully, mesmerized by his tactics and psychological approach to running a team. No two players were treated the same. Some players were upbraided for mistakes in front of the rest of the team while others were talked to privately. Some players were given cash bonuses for getting hit with a pitch or executing a squeeze bunt; others were rewarded for good play with more playing time. McGraw was devilish, taunting and berating umpires, and he loved trick plays.
McGraw noticed that Stengel was studying him and invited him for dinner at his home in Westchester County. The two would talk baseball all night.
Stengel was also a good reclamation project, especially in the 1922 World Series when he hit .400 in the Giants’ victory over the New York Yankees, a performance that added to Casey’s reputation in New York for World Series heroics.
In 1923, the year majestic, regal Yankee Stadium opened across the Harlem River from the Giants’ dull, unimaginative Polo Grounds, the Giants and Yankees again met in the World Series. In six games contested in two venues about a mile apart, Casey, who hit .339 in the regular season for the Giants, tormented Babe Ruth’s ascendant New York Yankees throughout the World Series.
In the first game, coming to the plate with two outs in the top of the ninth inning with the score tied, he hit a drive into the vast left-center-field gap of the Yankees’ new Bronx ballpark. Casey scurried around the bases before the ball could be returned to home plate even though he nearly lost a shoe rounding second base and tripped over third base. But Casey’s inside-the-park homer dash was the first World Series home run in Yankee Stadium, and it won the game for the Giants, 5–4.
The Giants also won the third game, 1–0, on Stengel’s home run in the seventh inning. The Yankees players had been making fun of Casey during at-bats ever since his stumbling circuit around the bases in the series opener. But when Casey’s drive crested the Yankee Stadium right-field wall, they watched silently as Casey, who was jogging slowly around the bases, turned to the Yankees’ dugout and thumbed his nose.
The home run and nose-thumbing were the Giants’ last gasp as they lost the series in six games. But Casey Stengel, who hit .417 in the series and .393 in three World Series, had made his place in New York postseason baseball history—a fact he no doubt later impressed on Billy. The legend of World Series heroes in New York never dies.
Dealt to the Boston Braves after the 1923 season, Ca
sey retired in 1925 at the age of thirty-four when the Braves asked him to instead manage the team’s minor league team in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Eight years and one minor league championship later, Brooklyn named him manager. After three losing seasons, he was fired and returned to Boston to manage an even worse team, the Braves, who played in a cold, windy park beside the Charles River.
Stengel’s Braves had losing seasons five times in six years. There was little talent on the roster, so he did what he could to help the cause by entertaining the baseball writers and fans with various antics. When storm clouds and rain greeted the beginning of one game, Casey brought the lineup cards to the umpires holding an umbrella in one hand and a lantern in the other. But eventually Boston fired him, too.
As Casey said 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.”
He resurfaced in Milwaukee for the 1944 season, where his team won the American Association, and then he worked one year for the Yankees’ AA minor league affiliate in Kansas City, where he caught the notice of Yankees owner Del Webb. The Yankees wanted Casey to stay, but he wanted something bigger than AA ball, and being back in Kansas City did not thrill his wife after so many years in cosmopolitan New York and Boston. The Yankees said they understood when he left and surreptitiously decided to keep an eye on his next team.
Casey landed in the Pacific Coast League in 1946, which was a good choice for the high quality of play. The bad news was that Casey agreed to manage the Oaks, who had not won the PCL title since 1927. It seemed a long way from the majors. Most people in baseball figured Casey Stengel’s Major League managing career was over anyway.
The unpolished Oaks were mocked in their own market, ridiculed in comparison to the more professional, moneyed San Francisco Seals across the bay. Their park was tattered and lifeless from years of losing, rows of plain wooden bleachers where the fans would lounge, seemingly more interested in sunbathing than in the game on the field.
In 1945, the Oaks had been a 90–93 team, but in 1946 Casey led the team to a 111–72 record. A second consecutive winning season in 1947 rejuvenated the franchise and brought crowds back to the Emeryville park. Casey’s roster was full of castoffs but they were a hard-nosed crew that battled, scraped, and defied the regal San Francisco Seals, defeating them in head-to-head matchups more often than not. The perennially underdog citizens of Oakland treasured the opportunity to beat San Francisco at anything and embraced Casey’s upstart Oaks.
By 1948, three years into his plan, Casey Stengel finally had molded the team in his image: older but wiser and holding on for one last sprint for the brass ring. There was a former Major Leaguer at every position and only five players remaining from the roster Stengel inherited in 1946.
And many of the new players were something else—Kenney Park regulars from before World War II. Billy knew them all, which made it easier in the Oaks’ 1948 preseason workouts, which were memorable because of Billy’s cheeky presence.
Stengel, for all his clowning, was a stern taskmaster about baseball fundamentals, and none of his players talked back to him when the subject was the rudiments and techniques of the game. Casey’s word ruled. He talked and players listened. No one else had a speaking part.
Until, that is, Billy came along. Early in 1948, Casey was watching Billy turning double plays at second and stopped the drill. He thought Billy was wasting too much motion. He wanted his second baseman to turn the double play with as few moving parts as possible, and he demonstrated how.
“Forget the Fancy Dan stuff,” Stengel said.
Billy considered what Casey was saying.
“My way is just as good because I have faster feet and hands,” he said.
“Kid, you ain’t on the floor jitterbugging,” Casey answered.
“Don’t knock it just because you can’t do it,” Billy fired back.
The other players awaited an explosion from their manager. At the very least they thought Billy would be sent to another field, or to the clubhouse.
Instead Stengel turned and walked away, hiding a smile with his hand. It was the kind of thing the twenty-year-old Casey Stengel, the ex-cabdriver, might have said in 1910. All these years later, Casey could do no more than laugh.
The Oaks were stacked with talent that year. The U.S. Supreme Court at the time was renowned as “Nine Old Men.” And as the Oaks broke camp, it was what the Oakland sportswriters called Stengel’s seasoned lineup: “Casey’s Nine Old Men.”
Billy turned twenty in May and saw the field rarely, but in time, injuries and other infirmities to the aging lineup earned him playing time all over the infield. The sportswriters started to amend their description of the team. They were the Eight Old Men and the Kid.
It was by far the highest level of baseball Billy had ever played, but he blended in, playing good defense even if he hit under .200 in his first 75 at-bats. Stengel made sure his young charge was not thrown into the mix before he was ready. He wanted Billy to watch the veterans play, and he did not care if Billy seethed on the bench game after game.
Casey had Billy sit with him while he pointed out various nuances he saw on the field, including how some infielders were tipping which kind of pitches were about to be thrown by moving left or right on the diamond too soon. Billy watched and listened as Casey predicted every pitch—breaking ball, fastball, changeup—all by watching the shortstop and second baseman.
It’s common for middle infielders to change their position on the diamond on most every pitch, but the stealthy infielder does not move until the pitcher is in his wind-up so the batter cannot read his movements and accurately guess what kind of pitch is coming.
But Stengel was ever vigilant, waiting to spot a slip-up of technique so he could use it to his advantage. Billy learned the value of seeing the whole field. Every game was an evolving mosaic, with one seemingly indiscriminate piece having the ability to affect another more crucial part of the game. It was one of the many tricks of the trade he learned at the side of his mentor.
Finally, in the second month of the season, Casey inserted Billy into the starting lineup. But Billy was unhappy because he was batting eighth, just ahead of the pitcher.
“The groundskeeper is probably hitting higher than me,” Billy snapped at Casey. “I hit .392 last year.”
“Get a bat, Dago, and shut up,” Casey said.
As Billy walked to the on-deck circle, Stengel suppressed a giggle. “That fresh punk,” he said. “I love him.”
7
BILLY DROVE A 1934 Chevrolet to Oaks Park for games. His cousin Mario, who would soon begin a sixty-four-year career in the auto parts industry, helped him find the car for next to nothing at auction. It came cheap because it was missing a fender and the driver’s side had been bashed in. Only the passenger-side doors worked, so everyone getting in the car entered on that side and slid across the bench seats.
There was a VIP/players’ parking lot next to Oaks Park, and it was filled with the swell cars driven by the ex–Major Leaguers on the roster. There were Cadillacs, Buicks, and spiffy Oldsmobiles. When Billy rolled in with his ’34 Chevy missing a fender, the other players asked him to park it at the far end of the lot. They didn’t want Billy’s wreck to sully the aura of prosperity and professionalism that the rest of the cars connoted to fans and passersby.
Billy heard his teammates’ requests. Then he started arriving at the ballpark first.
“Bill would park that junk heap of a car in the first spot closest to the entrance,” his sister Pat said. “They either had to park near him or park their cars at the other end, which was a longer walk and out of the way, too.
“They just gave up and parked next to Bill’s car. He thought that was a riot. The owner, Brick Laws, even said something to him. So Bill told Laws, ‘If you don’t like my car, you can buy me a new one.’”
The Oaks got off to a fast start in 1948, Stengel’s vetera
ns capturing the rest of the league by surprise. Stengel was working the home crowds from the third-base coaching box, encouraging their rowdy nature to make Oaks Park an undesirable stop for visiting teams. Even a few dozen noisy, boisterous fans could impact the game in the close confines of a park that sat about twelve thousand and often peddled discounted beer for 25 cents a cup.
While Casey was cheering on the fans’ raucous inclination, he had also chosen Billy for a key role: bench jockey.
It’s a lost art, and now considered beneath players making $15 million a year or more, but taunting and badgering the other team verbally from the dugout was once an accepted and prized part of baseball from high school through the Major Leagues. Casey was adept at it in his playing days, and he encouraged it in his players. Billy, who throughout life had a high-pitched, piercing voice when he yelled, knew how to get inside opposing players’ heads, and he could definitely be heard.
“There was something about his voice,” said his longtime friend and Oaks teammate Mel Duezabou. “You could hear it wherever you were on the field. When he was in the infield, he’d yell something to the catcher or the left fielder and you’d hear it clear as day. When he was in the dugout, he could yell across to the other dugout, to the second-base umpire, or the center fielder and he would be heard.
Billy Martin Page 7