Sport: Living Legend

Carey hadn’t hardly finished whisperin’ when Ike got up and pulled it:

“Well, good night, boys,” he says. “I ain’t sleepy, but I got some gravel in my shoes and it’s killin’ my feet.”

We knowed he hadn’t never left the hotel since we’d came in from the grounds and changed our clo’es. So Carey says:

“I should think they’d take them gravel pits out o’ the billiard room.”

For a decade sportsfans have known that the “Carey” of Ring Lardner’s immortal Alibi Ike is only a faint camouflage for the bowlegged, wisecracking figure of Charles Dillon (“Casey”) Stengel, 46, baseball’s No. 1 living legend. Last week Casey Stengel got ready to enlarge the legend.

No one quite knows how much of the legend is Casey and how much is the imagination of Sportswriters Ring Lardner, W. O. (“Bill”) McGeehan, Ed Anthony, Joe Williams and friends. The legend was built on a prosaic baseball career that began in Kansas City in 1910. In 1912 Casey (for K. C.) went up to the National League as outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1918 he was traded to Pittsburgh, then to Philadelphia,New York and Boston of the National League.

In 1925, after his major-league playing career ended, Casey managed minor-league teams in Worcester (Mass.) and Toledo. In 1932 Brooklyn again brought him to the major leagues—as a coach. In 1934 he succeeded Max Carey as manager of the Dodgers, and, in the fall of 1936, after three indifferent seasons with bad material, the notably erratic Brooklyn directors replaced him with onetime Spitball Pitcher Burleigh Grimes.

During the 1937 season Stengel risked becoming a forgotten man by keeping entirely out of baseball in order to force the Brooklyn directors to pay him the $15,000 called for during the remaining year of his unexpired contract. This incident was hardly noteworthy in the Stengel career.

¶In 1918, when Casey played his first game as a Pirate in the Brooklyn ball park, the Brooklyn crowd gave him a big hand. Casey bowed, lifted his cap. Out flew a bewildered sparrow.

¶During the 1923 World Series, Casey’s two home runs won both games the Giants won. At the conclusion of the Series, he learned that he had been traded to the Boston Braves. Said he: “Say, what does a fellow have to do to make good in this league! If I’d hit three home runs, they’d probably have sent me to the Three-Eye League.”

¶ In 1924, while he was playing for the Braves, several adverse decisions by Umpire Bill Klem annoyed Casey. He turned to Umpire Klem, half tore off his own shirt, snarled: “Here, wear our uniform for a while.”

¶In 1925 President Emil Fuchs of the Braves made Casey manager and president of his Worcester “farm” team. As president, Casey promptly traded himself to the Toledo Mudhens in a better league, then resigned as president of the Worcester club.

¶ Before the 1934 season started Giant Manager Bill Terry sarcastically inquired whether Brooklyn was still a member of the National League. He lived to regret it. The Brooklyn club closed the season in sixth place, but it was a great triumph for Casey because his team beat the Giants in the two crucial games that kept them from winning the league pennant.

So last week President J. A. Robert Quinn of the Boston Bees (onetime Braves) called a group of sportswriters into his office to add an item to the Stengel legend. All of them understood that President Quinn’s first two choices for manager of the Bees were Donie Bush, manager of the minor-league Minneapolis Millers, and Gabby Hartnett, catcher for the Chicago Cubs, who for a brief period last summer, managed the Cubs while they were topping the National League. But neither of them was available. So President Quinn picked up his telephone and asked the operator to get him Mr. C. D. Stengel at his oil field in Omaha. Tex. “Casey,” President Quinn called into the instrument, “want to come with us next year?”

Casey’s voice piped into the receiver: “Certainly, I’d be delighted.”

Since the Bees’ former manager, Bill McKechnie, has been hired by the Cincinnati Reds for next year and” Oscar Vitt, manager of the Newark Bears (International League), has been hired by the Cleveland Indians, after Casey Stengel’s “delighted,” only one major-league managerial job remained open: with the St. Louis Browns. Meanwhile, Infielder Tony Lazzeri, who was released by the New York Yankees to seek a manager’s berth, last week settled down not as manager but as coach of the Chicago Cubs.