page_title: Casey Stengel
section_title: Appraisal
hierarchical_section_title: Casey Stengel / Appraisal
caption_attribution_description: Casey Stengel's Baseball Hall of Fame Plaque. Taken by me. --(Review Me) R ParlateContribs@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 18:45, 22 July 2007 (UTC) 18:45, 22 July 2007 . . R . . 1,573×2,076 (1.04 MB)
context_page_description: 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 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.
context_section_description: Marty Appel wrote of Stengel, "He was not a man for all seasons; he was a man for baseball seasons". Stengel remains the only manager to lead his club to victory in five consecutive World Series. How much credit he is due for that accomplishment is controversial, due to the talent on the Yankee teams he managed—Total Baseball deemed that the Yankees won only six games more than expected during the Stengel years, given the number of runs scored and allowed. According to Bak, "the argument—even among some Yankees—was that the team was so good anybody could manage it to a title". Rizzuto stated, "You or I could have managed and gone away for the summer and still won those pennants". Appel noted, "There was no doubt, by taking on the Mets job, he hurt his reputation as a manager. Once again, it was clear that with good players he was a good manager, and with bad players, not. Still, his Yankee years had put him so high on the list of games won, championships won, etc., that he will always be included in conversations about the greatest managers".
  Bill Veeck said of Stengel in 1966, soon after the manager's retirement, "He was never necessarily the greatest of managers, but any time he had a ball club that had a chance to win, he'd win". Stengel's American League rival, Al Lopez, once said of him "I swear I don't understand some of the things he does when he manages". Though platooning survives, Stengel's intuitive approach to managing is no longer current in baseball, replaced by the use of statistics, and the advent of instant replay makes obsolete Stengel's tendency to charge from the dugout to confront an umpire over a disputed call.
  Stengel has been praised for his role in successfully launching the Mets. Appel deemed the Mets' beginnings unique, as later expansion teams have been given better players to begin with, "few expansion teams in any sport have tried the formula—a quotable, fan-popular man who would charm the press and deflect attention away from ineptness on the field". Arthur Daley of The New York Times wrote, "he gave the Mets the momentum they needed when they needed it most. He was the booster that got them off the ground and on their journey. The smoke screen he generated to accompany the blast-off obscured the flaws and gave the Mets an acceptance and a following they could not have obtained without him". James wrote, "Stengel became such a giant character that you really can't talk about him in the past. He became an enduring part of the game". Commissioner William Eckert said of Stengel, "he's probably done more for baseball than anyone".
  A child of the Jim Crow era, and from a border state (Missouri) with southern characteristics, Stengel has sometimes been accused of being a racist, for example by Roy Campanella Jr., who stated that Stengel made racist remarks from the dugout during the World Series towards his father Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson and other black stars of the Dodgers. Bak noted, though, that Stengel was a "vicious and inventive" bench jockey, hazing the other team with whatever might throw off their performance. Stengel had poor relations with Robinson; each disliked the other and was a vocal critic. One widely quoted Stengel comment was about catcher Elston Howard, who became the first black Yankee in 1955, eight years after Robinson had broken the color barrier, "they finally get me a nigger, I get the only one who can't run". Howard, though, denied that Stengel had shouted racial epithets at the Dodgers, and said "I never felt any prejudice around Casey". Al Jackson, a black pitcher with the Mets under Stengel, concurred, "He never treated me with anything but respect". According to Bill Bishop in his account of Stengel, "Casey did use language that would certainly be considered offensive today, but was quite common vernacular in the fifties. He was effusive in his praise of black players like Satchel Paige, Larry Doby and Howard". Conscious of changing times, Stengel was more careful in his choice of words while with the Mets.
  Stengel was sometimes considered thoughtless or eve
caption: Casey Stengel's plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame
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