Book Review: Casey Stengel: Baseball's Greatest Character

Casey Stengel: Baseball's Greatest Character by Marty Appel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I knew Appel's reputation as one of the foremost chroniclers of the New York Yankees baseball. Stengel is best known as manager of the 50s Yankees juggernaut, and then the hapless 60s Mets.

I have a relative who shared that Stengel once played in his town. This is true, but after I read this book, I realized Casey had been everywhere.

Stengel is also considered one of the most (if not the most) classic characters of baseball. I grew up with the great Yogi-ims that everyone knows from Yogi Berra, but "Stengelese" was first.

This book is great, because it covers all of those aspects of Stengel. It's not a great Yankees book (though Yankee fans should buy it), instead, it's a great "Baseball" book.

Casey started in major league baseball in 1912, so there's hardly a great of the game, he didn't encounter. Only the very early players like Cy Young or Wee Willie Keeler who were still fresh in everyone's minds when Stengel came up.

Stengel would see Babe Ruth pitching to him, play against Tinker, Evers, and Chance, and hit the first home run in Ebbets Field (as well as the first in-the-park home run in Yankee Stadium). He was a solid player and a character. This story starts before all that, with Stengel playing for the Kankakee Lunatics, among other minor and semi-pro teams.

Stengel rarely left the game, managing in the minors starting in the 1920s - a career that would see him managing in the National League and the Pacific Coast league before starting his run with the New York Yankees in 1949.

From 1949-1960, he would manage a team that might include Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizzuto, Berra, Bill Dickey, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Don Larsen, Bobby Richardson, Roger Maris and many many more. It might be easy to say Stengel won because he had such talent, but five World Series wins in a row has never been matched. It can also probably be said, he knew how to manage egos (check out how he worked with DiMaggio), a skill that Phil Jackson is quoted in the book as learning from Casey.

No doubt, Casey knew the game as well as anyone. He may have had talent, but he also had chops. He would be the first manager to really successfully use the "platoon" option of having players share duties.

He would be forced out for age and expectations with the Yankees, but would come back to be the first manager of the New York Mets at age 72. The Mets, of course, had been given everyone else's leftovers and were terrible - going 40-120 (losing three out of every four games). Still, Stengel was a success as Mets manager, since the media loved him, and the colorful Mets could outdraw the Yankees.

Stengel's legacy was both compromised and made by his tenure with the Mets. A manager who could win with good players, and couldn't win with bad players. Stengel likely knew to make the best of a bad situation, and his turn as Mets Skipper did make him a star. It is also true that while he was not able to do much with the Mets or earlier Boston Braves, perhaps he can be credited for planting seeds in a turnaround (The Mets would unexpectedly win it all, seven years later in 1969).

This book is so good, because it really handles all aspects of Stengel's life in top-notch style. There are plenty of great baseball facts and stories from at least 55 years in the game of baseball. There is insight to his relationship with wife Edna- a 50+ year marriage. A good look at his personality- public and personal. Good, fair insight into his skill as a manager. It treated his life fairly in equal parts- so it's not just about the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, or New York Mets, though of course, he spent much time with those teams.

I'm not a Yankees fan, but Appel surely won me over (his Thurman Munson bio is well-acclaimed). This book is very readable and is great in all categories. It certainly helped my knowledge of Casey and why he is considered the greatest character of the game (which has had a few great characters over the years). If you are not a baseball fan, this probably isn't for you, though I wouldn't stop you- it's a great book that I think anyone would enjoy. However, for baseball fans, this is a great read and well recommended.



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