Good morning!
Casey Stengel was born 126 years ago today in Kansas City, Mo. The Old Professor won 10 pennants and seven World Series while managing the Yankees for parts of three decades. He was fired and became the first manager of the New York Mets. Midway through the team’s hapless inaugural 1962 season he griped to reporters, “We’ve got to learn to stay out of triple plays.”
Stengel was beloved by the baseball beat writers who’d flock to him like worshippers to the yogi (not that Yogi). Inevitably, a loud burst of laughter would erupt from where Stengel was holding court.
He was a psychoanalyst of sorts, and well versed in the art of splitting. “The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.”
Baseball Almanac culled together several Stengelisms including an entry from Baseball Digest regarding Yogi Berra’s perpetual run of good luck. “He’d fall in a sewer and come up with a gold watch,” said Stengel, who played when racism and bigotry prevented fans from seeing black players like Satchel Paige. Stengel watched him pitch in the Negro Leagues and told writers, “Satchel Paige threw the ball as far from the bat and as close to the plate as possible.”
Stengel was mentored by the New York Giants Hall of Fame manager John “Muggsy” McGraw. He managed in the minors and was named to skipper the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1934. He wasn’t the Yankees manager until 1949 when he was 59 years old. With players named Berra, Mantle and DiMaggio he quipped, “Managing is getting paid for homeruns someone else hits.”
Stengel’s humor was underscored by his intrinsic baseball intuition. “I never saw a man who played his hunches so successfully,” said Connie Mack.
“Casey knew his baseball,” said Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson. “He only made it look like he was fooling around. He knew every move that was ever invented and some that we haven’t even caught on to yet.”
Happy birthday Casey; you never struck out.
Tomorrow is the 55th anniversary of the 1961 All Star game at Fenway Park, the second of two games that were played each season from 1959 to 1962.
A storm front had moved in off the ocean and the game was played in fog and drizzle. Rocky Colavito’s first inning home run off Bob Purkey held up until the Cardinals’ Bill White drove in the Dodgers’ Maury Wills in the top of the sixth inning.
Nobody complained when umpires declared it a tie after 10 innings. The game was played in 2 hours, 27 minutes before 31,851 fans.
Whereas a grandstand ticket in the third row of Section 20 cost $6 that year, a ticket in a similar seat location at Petco Park cost $220 for this year’s Mid Summer Classic in San Diego.
Chris Sale must have read “Running with Scissors.”
A week ago he busily shred enough 1976 throwback jerseys that the White Sox were forced to switch to throwbacks from the 1983 season. FanRag Sports reported that Sale had to pay $12,700 for the badly torn uniforms.
Although most felt Sale behaved childishly, everyone agreed the throwbacks were hard to look at. “Sale should be considered a hero to the Baseball fashion world,” wrote the Chicago Tribune’s David Haugh. “Talk about winning ugly.”
A few years ago the Red Sox wore uniforms that were white from head to toe. “Make us look like (bleeping) ice cream salesmen,” griped manager Terry Francona.
Pitcher-turnd-author Jim Bouton described in “Ball Four” the thrill of wearing the Yankees’ dignified pinstriped uniforms at home, and their Navy blue-and-gray uniforms on the road.
Bouton was shipped to the short-lived Seattle Pilots franchise in 1969. The team wore powder blue uniforms with yellow lettering and a cartoonish logo of a bat and baseball was embroidered on the jersey.
When one of Bouton’s former Yankee teammates was traded to Seattle, the former Yank was too embarrassed to leave the dugout.
Lucky Numbers: At Saratoga on Sunday the 5-1-3-11 Superfecta paid $50,108 on a $2 ticket, and the 8-2-4-5 paid $22,890 on Monday. Not all Supers are cash windfalls; a week ago the 5-2-1-4 paid $22.80.
Earlier this week at Saratoga, Majestic Bonnie broke her maiden at 12-1 odds. The chestnut filly races for the Bona Venture Stable managed by Dan Collins, who’s the vice-chair of the board of trustees at St. Bonaventure University. Collins tweeted this week he expects River of Dreams to be visiting the winner’s circle before the meet ends on Labor Day Weekend.
Williams College SID Dick Quinn sent us word that former Eph Joey Lye (’09) laid down a squeeze bunt that was the difference in Canada’s 4-3 win against China. The win helped Canada garner the bronze at the World Softball Championships in British Columbia, where the U.S. beat Japan, 7-3, to win the gold.
The U.S. team is composed of nary a player from the Northeast but five are from the University of Florida and three from UCLA.
The Texas Rangers this week called up top prospect Joey Gallo, a slugger out of the Dave Kingman mold who either homers or strikes out. Rangers manager Jeff Bannister said on SXM Radio that young hitters like Gallo must lay off bad pitches. “These guys come into pro baseball hitting against pitchers who are basically just throwing it into the clown’s mouth, and so they drill it out of the ballpark. They get into pro ball and it’s a different situation. They need to train their eyes to see the ball coming out of the pitcher’s hand.”
Squibbers: The UMass Minutemen are 37-point underdogs against the Florida Gators in the Swamp five weeks hence, according to vegasinsider.com. … John Farrell’s career managerial record going into last night’s game against the Angels was 455-455. … Former Red Sox players Jose Iglesias and Victor Martinez went 11-for-25 (.444) during the Tigers’ three-game sweep at Fenway Park this week. … Deerfield Academy grad Alex Killorn (’08) has signed a two-year, $5.1 million extension with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Killorn had 18 goals and 14 assists at Deerfield, continued his upside at Harvard and has 53 goals in four seasons with Tampa. … Mike Mayers had pitched 350 minor league innings before getting the call-up to start versus the Dodgers on Sunday night. Mayers gave up nine runs in 1 1/3 innings and left with a 60.75 ERA. … Sports fans would appreciate this. On June 11, 1949, Hank Williams Sr. did five encores of “Lovesick Blues” at the Grand Ole Opry. Five encores! That’s like hitting five home runs in a game. … Watching Jenny Johnson join NESN’s Dave O’Brien and Jerry Remy in the broadcast booth to talk about her show “Dining Playbook” during Wednesday’s loss to Detroit gave me indigestion. … Seung-hwan Oh has six saves for the Cards since he replaced Trevor Rosenthal as the closer. The implaccable 5-foot-10, 205-pound Oh was called Stone Buddha in South Korea and The Final Boss in Japan. Both nicknames have stuck in the U.S. … Don’t know who to vote for in November? Go to ISideWith.com and find out what candidate’s policies most closely align with your own beliefs. Mine? The Libertarian Gary Johnson. Who knew? … Hillary Clinton would be the first U.S. president since early last century not to golf (or throw out a first pitch). … Donald Trump, meanwhile, shot a 66 from the gold tees at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. He plays to a 3 handicap. … NESN’s Dave O’Brien on the dawdling mound habits of Giants pitcher Andrew Suarez: “Entire civilizations have risen and fallen in the time it takes Suarez to deliver a pitch.”
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.