Casey Stengel

By Adam Ruggiero
Love of Sports Correspondent

It’s not just the Yankees and Mets. It’s another dismal and scandal-wrought season by the Knicks.

It’s James Dolan – the veritable owner of Madison Square Garden and its “assets,” the Knicks and Rangers – facing expulsion from the NHL. It’s nonstop tabloid headlines that span New York sports and politics, (cough) Eliot Spitzer.

It’s all these things including the Yankees and Mets. Yanks freshman skipper, Joe Girardi, is slogging to keep his club from falling out of A.L. East contention before the All-Star break. With the Sox now the undisputed king of that division and the once-laughable Rays hovering four-and-a-half games ahead of Girardi’s guys, the future looks uncertain at best.

Less than an hour down the road, it’s the Mets, who are just now emerging from the PR nightmare they created after a clandestine firing of beleaguered ex-manager, Willie Randolph. Now the Mets must face their own divisional deficit with interim skipper Jerry Manuel, and like their crosstown counterparts, they must work to live up to their elite-level payroll (the Yankees lead the majors with a $209 million bank sheet, while the Mets come in third at $138 million).

It seems that now more than ever, New York sports fans need a hero, a leader; someone with backbone, someone who will rally the City That Never Sleeps.

Believe it or not, that someone may have already come and gone.

Casey Stengel, a.k.a. “The Ol’ Professor,” was as thoroughbred a New Yorker as they come, even though he was born in Missouri. In fact, his given name, Charles, was replaced by his hometown of Kansas City (K.C.). To this day, Stengel is the only player/manager to have worn all four New York uniforms: Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, Mets and Yankees. He was the first man to hit a home run out of Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, his 10 A.L. championships with the Yanks top the league and his seven World Series titles – five in a row! – tie him all-time with Joe McCarthy.

Stengel, though, may be more renowned for the levity he brought with him to the clubhouse. Pop flies caught either in his hat or behind his back were not out of the norm. In perhaps his most famous act, Stengel returned to Ebbets Field as a visiting Pittsburgh Pirate. Before heading out for his at-bat, he hid something under his hat and strode toward home plate to a cacophony of jeers. Stengel simply turned to the crowd, tipped his cap and to the shock and utter delight of everyone, out flew a live, happily chirping sparrow. Needless to say, the Ol’ Professor was nothing if not nutty.

As a manager, Stengel’s amazing numbers were almost outshined by the ineptitude of his “Amazin’ Mets,” a moniker he coined. In the conversation for worst baseball team of all time, the 1962 Mets gave awful a bad name, finishing the season a deceptively good 40-120. Yet Stengel, as only he could, drew fans in record numbers to the Mets’ Polo Grounds. Even as his team spiraled into infamy, Stengel made light of the loveable ballclub with all-timers like: “[With the Mets,] I see new ways to lose I never knew existed before,” and “The only thing worse than a Mets game is a Mets doubleheader.”

Still, Stengel’s slapsticks belied an honest love of the game; a passion that carried him through 14 seasons as a player and 25 more as a manager. His play could best be described with one word: abandon. Never the most talented man on the roster, Casey worked hard and played even harder, and he always left it all on the field.

As a testament to his legacy and his devotion to New York, Stengel’s #37 is the only one retired by both the Yankees and Mets. Further, the Hall of Fame created the Casey Stengel Rule, which expedites an eligible major leaguer’s induction if he is over 65.