“Casey” Stengel Baseball Player and Manager 1890-1975

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Missouri Valley Special Collections: Biography Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel Baseball Player and Manager 1890-1975

by David Conrads

In a career that spanned six decades, Casey Stengel made his mark on baseball as a player, coach, manager, and all-around showman. Arguably the greatest manager in the history of the game, he set many records during his legendary stint with the New York Yankees in the 1950s. He is perhaps equally famous for his colorful personality, offbeat antics, and his homespun anecdotes, delivered in a personal language dubbed “Stengelese,” which was characterized by humor, practicality, and long-windedness.

Charles Dillon Stengel was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He attended Woodland Grade School then switched to the Garfield Grammar School. A tough kid, with a powerful build, he was a great natural athlete and star of the Central High School sports teams. While still in school, he played for semi-professional baseball teams sponsored by the Armour Packing Company and the Parisian Cloak Company, as well as for the Kansas City Red Sox, a traveling semi-pro team. He quit high school in 1910, just short of graduating, to play baseball professionally with the Kansas City Blues, a minor-league team.

Stengel made his major league debut in 1912 as an outfielder with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was then that he acquired his nickname, which was inspired primarily by his hometown as well as by the popularity at the time of the poem “Casey at the Bat.” A decent, if not outstanding player, Stengel played for 14 years with five National League teams.

Stengel retired as a player in 1925. After several years managing in the minor leagues, he was hired as a coach for the lowly Brooklyn Dodgers in 1933. He took over as manager the next year, a position he held for three season before going to the Boston Braves— another losing team—for six years. In 1949, in an unexpected move, he was hired to manage the venerable New York Yankees. Stengel surprised everyone with 12 spectacularly successful years with the Yankees, leading them to ten first-place finishes, including a record five consecutive pennants and five consecutive world championships.

The Kansas City Public Library | 14 W. 10th St. | Kansas City, MO 64105 | 816.701.3427 | kchistory.org Missouri Valley Special Collections: Biography

“The Ol’ Professor” ended his baseball career as manager of the newly-formed New York Mets, one of the worst teams in baseball, from 1962 to 1965.

Stengel was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966 and died in Glendale, California, in 1975.

Sources

Bak, Richard. Casey Stengel: A Splendid Baseball Life. Dallas, Texas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1997.

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

Durso, Joseph. “Stengel’s Death at 85 Widely Mourned.” New York Times, 1 Oct. 1975.

“Ol’ Case: One of a Kind.” The Kansas City Times, 1 Oct. 1975.

Shatzkin, Mike, ed. The Ballplayers: Baseball’s Ultimate Biographical Reference. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1990.

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

The Kansas City Public Library | 14 W. 10th St. | Kansas City, MO 64105 | 816.701.3427 | kchistory.org