Casey Stengel - Managerial Career

Managerial Career

Stengel's first managerial positions were with the Brooklyn Dodgers (1934–1936) and Boston Braves (1938–1943), for whom he never finished better than fifth in an eight-team league. As he said in 1958, "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 demonstrated he could be successful as a manager of a team having worthy talent. In 1944, Stengel was hired as the manager of the minor league Milwaukee Brewers, over the strenuous objections of club owner Bill Veeck (who was serving in the South Pacific in the Marines at the time, and therefore unable to prevent the hiring). Stengel led the Brewers to the American Association pennant that year. In 1948 Stengel managed the Oakland Oaks to the Pacific Coast League championship. This caught the attention of the New York Yankees, who were looking for a new manager.

Despite a good deal of initial skepticism in the press, Stengel was hired as the skipper of the Yankees in 1949, and finally had a chance for success at the major league level. When he took the reins of the Yankees, he made this observation: "There is less wrong with this team than any team I have ever managed."

He and the Yankees proceeded to win record numbers of championships. Stengel became the only person to manage a team to five consecutive World Series championships (1949–1953). After the streak ended with the Yankees failing to win the American League pennant in 1954, Stengel and the Yanks continued their dominance, going on to win two more World Championships (1956 and 1958), and five more American League pennants (1955–1958, 1960). As manager of the Yankees, Stengel gained a reputation as one of the game's sharpest tacticians: he platooned left and right-handed hitters extensively (which had become a lost art by the late 1940s), and sometimes pinch hit for his starting pitcher in early innings if he felt a timely hit would break the game open.

Stengel was a master publicist and promoter, especially for his teams. He was a captivating raconteur and especially during the years of success with the Yankees had the New York media eating out of his hand. He became as much of a public figure as many of his star players, such as Mickey Mantle. He appeared on the cover of national, non-sports, magazines such as Time. His apparently stream-of-consciousness monologues on all facets of baseball history and tactics (and anything else that took his fancy) became known as "Stengelese" to sportswriters. They also earned him the nickname "The Old Professor".

In the spring of 1953, after the Yankees had won four straight World Series victories, he made the following observation, which could just as easily have been made by The Professor's prize pupil, Yogi Berra (who would also become famous with many laughably quotable statements): "If we're going to win the pennant, we've got to start thinking we're not as smart as we think we are."

Although Stengel benefited from the Yankees' deep pockets and ability to sign players, he was a hands-on manager: The 1949 Yankees were riddled by injuries, and Stengel's platooning abilities played a major role in their championship run. Platooning also played a major role in the 1951 team's World Series run. With Joe DiMaggio declining rapidly and Mickey Mantle yet to become a powerhouse, Stengel, leaving his solid pitching alone, moved players in and out of the line-up, putting good hitters in the line-up in the early innings and benching them for superior fielders later. The Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians for the pennant and took the Series from the New York Giants four games to two.

Aside from "Stengelese", Casey's sense of humor would be displayed in various ways. One story is repeated in Lost Ballparks (Lawrence S. Ritter, Viking Studio Books, 1992, p. 35), in which Stengel plays with fans of the Chicago White Sox in 1960, the first year of Comiskey Park's "exploding scoreboard", then a novelty and an annoyance to some visiting teams. The scoreboard would light up, make noise, and shoot off fireworks whenever a Sox player would hit a home run. According to the book, on the Yankees' "first visit" to Chicago that year, Stengel and the Yankees waved some sparklers after Clete Boyer hit a home run. While the sparkler waving actually did happen, it wasn't until the Yankees' second visit to Chicago that this took place, a Friday night game on June 17.

After losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series after a ninth-inning game-winning home run by Bill Mazeroski, Stengel was involuntarily retired from the Yankees, because he was believed to be too old to manage. As reported in Ken Burns' PBS documentary series, Baseball, Stengel remarked that he had been fired for turning 70, and that he would "never make that mistake again."