Go to the Head of the Class with a Baseball Legend Baseball legend Casey
Stengel is considered by many to be the greatest manager in baseball
history. He was certainly one of the most successful. He managed the
fabled New York Yankees from 1949 to 1960 and compiled ten American
League pennants and seven world championships during that time. He was
also without question one of the game's all-time characters, best known
for conversing in a mangled form of English that came to be known as
Stengelese. Beyond the comedy and the world championships, however, his
baseball life spanned the ages, from the dead-ball era to Astro Turf. He
began his big league career by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1912
and ended it by managing the hapless New York Mets in 1965. Between the
first and last stop, Stengel was a World Series hero; a failed manager
with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves; a washed-up, aging manager
in the minors; and the wacky interloper who took over the stuffy, staid
Yankees in 1949 and reformed them into a dynasty. In Casey Stengel:
Baseball's Old Perfessor, dozens of former players, friends, and
associates recall the Stengel myth and the Stengel reality. They explore
his managing style with great teams and with horrible teams; his
pioneering, controversial techniques; his humor, his edginess, and his
weaknesses; why some players hated him while others loved him; why some
think he was a genius and others think he was merely the right man in
the right place at the right time. What emerges is a fascinating ride
through baseball history and a thoughtful look at the life of a man who
was counted out, mocked, and underestimated--and yet he never gave up,
finally findingsuccess in his later years.
