Casey Stengel - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Casey Stengel

Casey Stengel was the legendary manager of the NY Yankees and Mets from 1949-1965 who was known for his pranks. My first recollection of the clown genius manager came from Hall of Fame announcer Waite Hoyt during a Reds doubleheader broadcast over the radio while Dad and I were milking the cows in the barn on a hot summer afternoon in August of 1958. I was 10 and between games, Hoyt was regaling the listening audience with baseball stories from the past. Hoyt played for the Yankees so many of his stories were about that legendary team, including Stengel.

Charles Stengel was from Kansas City, so his nickname became KC, and eventually was legally changed to Casey. He was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1912. When Stengel came to Daytona in 1915 for spring training with the Dodgers, he had a new manager, Wilbert Robinson, who was almost 53 but still saw himself as a catcher of heroic ability; so when the new manager was reminded that in 1908 the Washington Senators catcher Charles “Gabby” Street had caught a baseball released from a window near the top of the Washington Monument, Robinson boasted that he could do even better – he could catch a baseball dropped from an airplane from the same height –525 feet. So Stengel and other members of the team bet that their manager couldn’t do it.

Plans were made for Ruth Law, a daredevil biplane stunt pilot from Ormond Beach, to fly over City Island Ball Park. It would be an easy feat for Law, an expert aviator. She had purchased her first plane three years earlier from Orville Wright, and the year before this baseball park fly-over, the New Smyrna Beach News reported that she “has given her word that she will conquer the air at night or die in the attempt.” Ruth Law was good to her word, becoming the first woman ever to fly an airplane at night. As the pilot flew over the wide Halifax River, she was closing in on tiny City Island Park which was so small back then that a home run could clear the playing field (which had no outfield fence) and roll into the river. Prankster Casey Stengel arranged to have the the pilot drop, not a 5-ounce baseball, but a huge, juicy, one-pound, ruby red Florida grapefruit from a height of at least 525 feet.

Robinson, of course, had no idea what was befalling him, so he stood his ground and positioned himself under the cascading “ball” so it would plop into his open catcher’s mitt, which in those days was small and had very little padding. Suddenly, at impact, according to the Sporting News, the “ball” smashed into his mitt and exploded with a loud bang, knocking Robinson to the ground as all the team and spectators watched. The grapefruit instantly soaked Robinson with juice and pulp and ricocheted off his face. One report says he was knocked unconscious.

The collision was so explosive that Robinson thought he had lost an eye. He felt great pain in the eye – from the grapefruit juice – and he could feel his “blood” splattered all over him. He screamed for help, yelling, “Help me, lads, My chest split open! I’m covered with my own blood.” The grapefruit “tore through him like a cannonball,” as a Tampa Tribune writer described.

Forever after this, Robinson called airplanes “fruit flies.” Two years later during World War I, Ormond Beach daredevil pilot Ruth Law became “the first woman to wear an Army Airs Corps uniform” even though she was not permitted to fly combat missions. The legend began in Daytona at what is now Jackie Robinson Ball Park, and thanks to this prank, people to this day still refer to spring training in Florida as “The Grapefruit League.”

Famous Stengel Quotes:

There comes a time in every man's life and I've had many of them.

Most ball games are lost, not won.

The trick is growing up without growing old.

The trouble is not that players have sex the night before a game. It's that they stay out all night looking for it.

All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.

Most people my age are dead at the present time.

They say Yogi Berra is funny. Well, he has a lovely wife and family, a beautiful home, money in the bank, and he plays golf with millionaires. What's funny about that?

Two hundred million Americans, and there ain't two good catchers among ‘em.

Casey during Senate Testimony on player salaries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_BveD5KgWg

Casey interview as Mets manager: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylreuvfaNgk&t=10s

Stengel is sometimes described as one of the great managers in major league history, others have contrasted his success during the Yankee years with his lack of success at other times, and concluded he was a good manager only when given good players. Stengel is definitely remembered as one of the great characters in baseball history. He definitely had a way with words. The trouble was with the way he combined them. Stengelese became the term used to describe his vocabulary and implausible double-talk. Here are some examples (with translation provided).

The tributes to Stengel upon his death in 1975 were many. Writer Maury Allen wrote, "He is gone and I am supposed to cry, but I laugh. Every time I saw the man, every time I heard his voice, every time his name was mentioned, the creases in my mouth would give way and a smile would come to my face”. Richie Ashburn, a member of the 1962 Mets, stated, "Don't shed any tears for Casey. He wouldn't want you to... He was the happiest man I've ever seen”.[ Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "God is certainly getting an earful tonight”.

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