October 12, 1948: The Yankees Hire "Clown" Casey Stengel

October 12, 1948: The New York Yankees hire Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel as their manager. Stengel had just managed the Oakland Oaks -- including former star big-league catcher Ernie Lombardi and a 20-year-old sparkplug local boy from West Berkeley named Billy Martin -- to the Pacific Coast League Pennant, so chances were that some big-league team would have snapped him up in the next year or two if the Yankees didn't.

But his 2 previous big-league managing jobs, with the Brooklyn Dodgers (managing them in between Wilbert Robinson and Leo Durocher) and the Boston Braves, were terrible. In Brooklyn in 1935, it was quipped that overconfidence might cost the Dodgers 6th place.

In Boston in 1943, Casey was slightly injured when hit by a cab, and a sportswriter called the driver the man who had done the most for Boston baseball that season. One man wrote an open letter to Casey, sending it to a Boston newspaper, saying, "There is a train leaving Boston at 6:00 tonight. Be under it." Not on it, under it.

He was 58 years old in 1948, and, like Connie Mack, he always looked even older than he was. And he had a reputation as a "clown," for such antics as tipping his cap and letting a bird fly out from under it, and protesting the weather to an umpire by walking out of the dugout with an umbrella. This was not a man who would manage "the Yankee way," sportswriters said.

Then again, Casey really didn't have the players in Flatbush or in Allston. Once he proved everyone wrong by winning the 1949 Pennant, he said, with a mixture of pride and humility, "I couldn't have done it without my players."

"My players." The holdovers from the Joe McCarthy days did not get along with Casey: DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich, Charlie Keller, Phil Rizzuto. (Most of McCarthy's pitchers were already gone.) Casey began phasing them out almost immediately, and replacing them with his guys: Yogi Berra, Billy Martin, Gil McDougald, Gene Woodling, Hank Bauer. And yet, he never really treated his best player, Mickey Mantle, like "one of his guys."

Finally having the horses, Casey went on to manage the Yankees for 12 years, winning 10 Pennants and 7 World Series.

He then managed the Mets in their first 4 years, 1962-65, prompting Warren Spahn, running out the string with the Mets after 22 years with the Braves, to say, "I'm the only man who played for Casey both before and after he was a genius."

Yogi Berra, by then one of Casey's coaches, came out of retirement and played a few games, including behind the plate. Someone asked him if he and Spahn were the oldest "battery" -- pitcher-catcher combination -- in baseball history. Yogi told him, "I don't know if we're the oldest, but we're certainly the ugliest."

Casey is still the most successful manager in baseball history. He was fast-tracked to election to the Hall of Fame after his retirement, the Yankees dedicated a Plaque in Monument Park to his memory, and he lived to see both the Yankees and the Mets retire his Number 37. The parking lot at Shea, and now at Citi Field, is named Casey Stengel Plaza, and the Long Island Rail Road yard across Roosevelt Avenue is named the Casey Stengel Depot.

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October 12, 1948 was a Tuesday. The baseball season had ended the day before, with the Cleveland Indians beating the Boston Braves in Game 6 to win the World Series. Football was in midweek. The NHL season started the next day. And the season of the league that would become the NBA started 20 days later. So there were no scores on this historic day.