Old Case's Big Mistake

He was born Charles Dillon Stengel in Kansas City, MO on July 30, 1890. Like most boys of his era, he grew up playing all sports, but he had no desire to become a professional athlete. 

Instead, he wanted to be a dentist, and upon his graduation from high school in 1908, he made plans to pursue his dream. To finance his studies, “Casey” as he was known (a reference to Kansas City—KC) decided to play minor league baseball for a few years, save the necessary money and go to dental school. 

Dental school proved to be a challenge. First, there were no left-handed dental instruments (Stengel was a southpaw). Second, the course of study proved difficult enough to convince Stengel to look elsewhere for a career. 

So he turned (or re-turned) to baseball, and by 1912 he made it all the way to the major leagues, playing outfield for the Brooklyn Dodgers, with whom he stayed until 1919, when he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

Casey was a good ball player, hitting over .280 for his career. He was also a man of many “firsts”, one of which took place in his initial season with the Pirates. The team was playing at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, where only a year before Stengel himself had been patrolling the outfield. The crowd was riding him mercilessly, because of his change in teams. Somehow, somewhere, Stengel found and was able to capture a sparrow, which he carefully snuck under his cap. The next time he came to bat Stengel surgically surveyed the jeering crown, gave a theatrical bow and doffed his chapeau, allowing the sparrow to fly away, to the uproarious glee and applause of the Brooklyn faithful, thus making him the first (and most likely only) athlete to receive a standing ovation from the enemy crowd for giving them the bird. 

In 1923 he hit the first inside-the-park home run in World Series history as a member of the New York Giants. 

By 1925, Casey had retired as a player and began his managerial career in the minor leagues, and after ten years of apprentice work, he made it to the majors as a manager for first the Dodgers (1934-36) and then the Boston Braves (1938-43). The teams Stengel managed were “hapless, hopeless and helpless” and after the ’43 season, he returned to managing in the minors. 

At the end of 1948, Stengel was approaching 60 during a time when the average life expectancy at birth in the U. S. was 66.31 years for someone born then. Stengel himself had already surpassed the 42.5 years folks born in 1890 faced on their natal day. Out of the blue, he was called to manage the greatest team in baseball—the New York Yankees. Yes, the Bronx Bombers of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and soon-to-be Mantle fame. 

For years, Stengel had been managing teams that could best be described as used Fords. In 1949 he was presented with a brand new Cadillac. From 1949 through 1960, Stengel would win 1149 games (95.75 wins per year), win 10 American League pennants and 7 World Series. His winning percentage of .623 was eclipsed only by the fabled Joe McCarthy (.627) among Yankee skippers. 

As I said earlier, Stengel was a man of many “firsts”. He was among the first to make use of relief pitchers, among the first to “platoon” players (play men against opponents they did well against while resting the “regular” starter) and among the very best at manipulating the press with his incessant quips and quotes. Many of his players loved him and many more didn’t. He is famous for having once said, “ The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.” 

For twelve years, “The Old Perfessor”, or “Case” as he was known, succeeded in keeping the factions separated. Then, in 1960, Case made his big mistake. 

The 1960 World Series saw the ever-powerful Yankee team, led by bombers such as Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Bill Skowron, Elston Howard and Yogi Berra and a pitching staff led by Whitey Ford meet a scrappy Pittsburgh Pirates squad that featured guys named Dick Groat, Bill Virdon, Bob Friend, Vernon Law, Elroy Face, Roberto Clemente, Smoky Burgess, Rocky Nelson, Don Hoak and a feisty second baseman named Bill Mazeroski. 

Early on, a pattern was established. When the Yankees won, they destroyed the Pirates. When Pittsburgh won, they barely squeaked by. Here are the scores:

• Game 1: Pittsburgh 6, New York 4
• Game 2: New York 16, Pittsburgh 3
• Game 3: New York 10, Pittsburgh 0
• Game 4: Pittsburgh 3, New York 2
• Game 5: Pittsburgh 5, New York 2
• Game 6: New York 12, Pittsburgh 0 

After six games, the Yankees had outscored the Pirates 46-17, but the Series was tied. It all came down to game 7 at the old ivy-covered Forbes Field in the Steel City.

The game was a classic. There are arguments to be made that this game may have indeed been the greatest seventh game of any World Series ever. The Pirates scored 2 runs in each of the first two innings. It looked as though it might be a blowout. Then the Yankees began to crawl back in the game. In the top of the fifth inning, Bill Skowron hit what appeared at the time to be an innocuous one-run homer, bringing the score to 4-1 in favor of the Pirates. The next inning, the Yankees erupted for four runs, capped by a Yogi Berra home run. 

After six inning, the Yanks led 5-4. They added two more runs in the eighth inning, and as the Pirates came to bat in the bottom of the inning, the score stood 7-4 with but an inning and a half left to play. 

In the bottom half of the eighth, fate intervened. Gino Cimoli led off with a pinch-hit single. Then Bill Virdon hit a hard ground ball to Yankee All-star shortstop Tony Kubek—a sure double play. But wait! The ball hits a pebble and instead of landing in Kubek’s glove for the beginning of a double play, it smashes him in the Adam’s Apple. Kubek collapses and has to be carted off the field. An infield single by Roberto Clemente and a home run by catcher Hal Smith followed, and the Bucs entered the ninth with a 9-7 lead. 

The Yankees being the Yankees, they somehow managed to scratch out two runs in the top of the ninth, aided largely by Mickey Mantle deciding not to run toward second base on what would have been the third out to end the game. Instead, he scurried back to first, avoided the tag and allowed the tying run to score. 

Ralph Terry had come in to pitch for the Yankees in the eighth inning. In the ninth, he contributed to one of two more “firsts” for Casey Stengel. On his second pitch to the usually light-hitting second baseman, Bill Mazeroski, he gave up what was to become the first and so far only walk-off home run in the seventh game of a World Series. 

Was keeping Ralph Terry in the game Case’s Big Mistake? 

No, but it was the excuse for management to give him one final first: The first manager to be fired after taking his team to the World Series—replaced by a much younger Ralph Houck. 

Case’s Big Mistake? In his own words: “They told me my services were no longer desired because they wanted to put in a youth program as an advance way of keeping the club going. I’ll never make the mistake of being seventy again.” 

I know how you feel, Case.