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Casey Stengel Quotes

Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel was an American Major League Baseball right fielder and manager, best known as the manager of the championship New York Yankees of the 1950s and later, the woeful expansion New York Mets. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.

Stengel was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1890. In 1910, he began a professional baseball career that would span over half a century. After almost three seasons in the minor leagues, Stengel reached the major leagues late in 1912, as an outfielder, for the Brooklyn Dodgers. His six seasons there saw some success, among them playing for Brooklyn's 1916 National League championship team; but he also developed a reputation as a clown. After repeated clashes over pay with the Dodgers owner, Charlie Ebbets, Stengel was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1918; however, he enlisted in the Navy that summer, for the remainder of World War I. After returning to baseball, he continued his pay disputes, resulting in trades to the Philadelphia Phillies and to the New York Giants . There, he learned much about baseball from the manager, John McGraw, and had some of the glorious moments in his career, such as hitting an inside-the-park home run in Game 1 of the 1923 World Series to defeat the Yankees. His major league playing career ended with the Boston Braves in 1925, but he then began a career as a manager.

The first twenty years of Stengel's second career brought mostly poor finishes, especially during his MLB managerial stints with the Dodgers and Braves . He thereafter enjoyed some success on the minor league level, and Yankee general manager George Weiss hired him as manager in October 1948. Stengel's Yankees won the World Series five consecutive times , the only time that has been achieved. Although the team won ten pennants in his twelve seasons, and won seven World Series, his final two years brought less success, with a third-place finish in 1959, and a loss in the 1960 World Series. By then aged 70, he was dismissed by the Yankees shortly after the defeat.

Stengel had become famous for his humorous and sometimes disjointed way of speech while with the Yankees, and these skills of showmanship served the expansion Mets well when they hired him in late 1961. He promoted the team tirelessly, as well as managing it to a 40–120 win–loss record, the most losses of any 20th century MLB team. The team finished last all four years he managed it, but was boosted by considerable support from fans. Stengel retired in 1965, and became a fixture at baseball events for the rest of his life. Although 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 only a good manager when given good players. Stengel is remembered as one of the great characters in baseball history. Wikipedia  

✵ 30. July 1890 – 29. September 1975
Casey Stengel photo
Casey Stengel: 9   quotes 1   like

Famous Casey Stengel Quotes

“The trick is growing up without growing old.”

Casey Stengel

“This makes a man think. You look up and down the bench and you say to yourself, "Can't anybody here play this game?"”

Casey Stengel

As quoted in Can't Anybody here Play This Game? (1963) by Jimmy Breslin; reproduced in "Rocene's Sport Jabs" by Ray Rocene, in The Missoulian (April 21, 1963), p. 11

“Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.”

Casey Stengel

As quoted in "L. M. Boyd" http://www.mediafire.com/view/ulp201hdoc2hs32/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-10%20at%203.10.58%20PM.png by Boyd, in The Sioux City Journal (April 20, 1981), p. A17

“It's a good likeness of The Dutchman. It's perfect the way they have him holding a bat in his big hands. He was good with the bat but he was a terror with that glove, too. And my, how he could run the bases. Come to think of it, he was as good a ball player as I ever saw. Maybe the best. John McGraw always said Wagner was the greatest and I'm inclined to agree with him. He was certainly the best I ever played against. Wagner was a huge man with huge hands. He could cover ground and he could throw. Amazing thing about him was his arm. It was only as good as the runner. If you were an average runner, he'd just beat you with his throw. And if you were fast, he'd just beat you again.”

Casey Stengel

As quoted in "The Scoreboardː Stengelː 'Wagner Best I Ever Saw'" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_kYqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9U4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7207%2C1231475 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (July 7, 1963), Sec. 4, p. 3

“The key to good management is keeping the nine guys who hate your guts away from the nine guys who haven't made up their minds.”

Casey Stengel

Common Ground News http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=2316&lan=en&sid=1&sp=0

“The new park sure holds the heat. The heat took the press right out of my pants.”

Casey Stengel

On Busch Memorial Stadium, site of the 1966 MLB All-Star Game; as quoted in "Frank Doesn't Miss NL Pitching" by Neal Russo, in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (July 13, 1966), p. 4C

“Without losers, where would the winners be?”

Casey Stengel

The Gospel According to Casey (1992), ed. Berkow & Kaplan, St. Martin's Press, p. 19 : ISBN 0312069227</small> , as cited in The Executive's Book of Quotations (1994), ed. Martin & Moskin, Oxford University Press, p. 299 : <small>ISBN 0195078365

“I've been talking only of some of the things Wagner did in the field. But he was a terror with that bat. The only other right-handed batter I could compare him with was Rogers Hornsby. Wagner could hit line drives into right field all day long. And when you started to shade him toward right field, he'd flip that bat, fake the third baseman into a bunt and hit it past him. And how he could run, too, even with his bowlegs. Honus had as much baseball instinct as I ever saw in a player. It was an education to play against him and a delight to watch him.”

Casey Stengel

As quoted in "The Scoreboardː Stengelː 'Wagner Best I Ever Saw'" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_kYqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9U4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7207%2C1231475

“Maybe, but I don't have another life to live to wait around for it.”

Casey Stengel

Speaking on August 31, 1956 at Griffith Stadium, in response to pitcher Whitey Ford's assurance that he could indeed retire Jim Lemon, who had homered off Ford in each of his previous three at-bats; as quoted in The Greatest Team of All Timeː As Selected by Baseball's Immortals, From Ty Cobb to Willie Mays (1994) by Nicholas Acocella and Donald Dewey, p. 113

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