The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 84

Everybody's Pal Casey Stengel, An intimate portrait of baseball's leading and zaniest skipper "You can do everything real good, Casey told the boy. "How much wouil you want to sign with a farm club?" "About $2,000 a month," said the be-, "I'm sorry, son, but I'm afraid a won't do," saidCasey. "You're too tallf Another time Casey indulged hims( caustically came after an umpire called several close ones against Stcr gel's team. Casey whipped off his shir 'and told the arbiter, "Here, wear th and play on our side for a while." Umpire Lou Jorda likewise will forget making a call Casey dispute Jorda called a ball on one of Casey 5 pitchers; Casey protested it was a strik because the batter had attempted i bunt. Jorda said flatly, "No!" 1 "You're wrong.

Just ask one of thj other umpires," said Casey. Jorda refused to consult his felloe umpires, so Casey folded his hands intJ a megaphone and shouted: "You othei umps can go home for the day. Jorda'l gonna run the whole game from here." I Hollow Inside There was the afternoon, too, when things went against Casey's team no; because of the umpires but because Tony Cuccinello was tagged out as he went into third base standing up. News papermen asked Stengel why Cuccinello had not made a slide, and Stengel said. "He was afraid of breaking his cigars." Casey came up with the answer for that one, all right, just as he had retorted with a squelch many summers before when Barney Dreyfuss, owner of the Pirates, berated him for not sliding.

"I have to be careful, Dreyfuss," Casey had explained. "I'm so hollow on the salary you pay that I'm liable to irom his eye. The fans booed, and Umpire Charley Rigler spoke a few words to him. Casey made a sweeping bow to Rigler and to the stands, then yanked off his cap. A sparrow fluttered from atop Casey's head and flew off into the blue! The grapefruit and the sparrow incidents, of course, were no surprise to the manager of one of the first minor league clubs on which Stengel played.

That club's home field was adjacent a mental hospital, whose inmates peered thru a fence whenever a game was on. Their hero? The dashing Casey who always slid to his post in the outfield. One day the manager, looking first at the cheering inmates and then at Casey, said resignedly, "Stengel, it's only a matter of time." That manager should be around today to hear Casey speak in the Stengelese he has perfected thru the years. Stengelese may be the most delightful thing about this most beloved of all baseball men. At least such is the opinion of a southern gentleman who one spring gave a lavish party for the Yankees.

Stengel was the -speaker, and with such a captive collection of ears he spoke, and spoke, and spoke. Later, the host said: "For the first time in my life, I have listened to another man talk for two hours. I haven't the slightest idea of what he was talking about, but it was wonderful." There are times when Casey speaks intelligently but caustically. As when a hot-shot youngster reported to the Braves' spring camp during Casey's tenure as manager of that club. The boy was great, and Casey wanted him for the Braves, who were about impoverished, artistically and financially.

The grapefruit incident took place in Daytona Beach in 1916. The principals, besides Casey who now deprecates his own role, were Miss Law, "which she is maybe the first lady flyer," and Uncle Wilbert Robinson, fabled manager of the Brooklyn National league club. Grapefruit, Alas Gabby Street's headline feat of catching a baseball dropped from the Washington monument inspired the thought that one of the zany Brooklyns should catch a baseball dropped from Miss Law's flying machine. Stengel was elected to pitch the ball from the plane. Uncle Wilbert was to make the catch.

It was not, alas, a baseball that was dropped. It was a grapefruit. And, alas, Uncle Wilbert did not make the catch with his mitten. The grapefruit smote Uncle Wilbert on the chest and sent him sprawling. Uncle Wilbert clutched at his chest, felt the ooze and goo of the broken grapefruit, and cried: "Help, I'm dying! I'm bleeding to death!" Casey Stengel nowadays declares that the club trainer, named Kelly, was the man in the plane.

Nonetheless, diamond lore credits Casey with at least the inspiration to substitute a grapefruit for the baseball. Uncle Wilbert subsequently swapped Stengel to Pittsburgh, and this set the stage for the sparrow incident. The first afternoon Stengel wore a Pittsburgh uniform into Brooklyn's ball park the home fans greeted their ex-hero with catcalls. They booed in chorus when Casey dramatically lugged five bats to the plate. Casey stepped from the batter's box and made a show of rubbing a cinder ONE LONG AGO DAY two American association umpires had a run-in with Charles Dillon Casey Stengel, then manager of the Toledo club and now the genius who has directed the New York Yankees to seven American league pennants and six world championships in eight seasons.

The rhubarb finally was carried to the late commissioner of baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, with the arbiters innocently figuring that right would make might. But the reports on Stengel's antics seemed so implausible to Landis that he suspended both umpires. They must have been drunk, decreed the very blunt Landis, to have so magnified the frustrations Stengel was accused of causing them. 0, yeah! That was early in Stengel's managerial career. As time passed, Judge Landis and the baseball public came to believe anything they heard about the inimitable Casey Stengel.

You know Casey Stengel, the frustrated left handed dentist who wore gaudy ties with his baseball uniform when he broke into the game almost half a century ago. You know Casey Stengel, the lovable old guy who fractures our mother tongue with sentences such as these: "0. now all you players line up alphabetically according to size." "They tell me it can't be done, but of course that doesn't always work." "So this here Ruth Law, which she is maybe the first lady flyer. You certainly know Casey Stengel as the star character in two of baseball's oft recounted anecdotes: the tale of the grapefruit and the tale of the sparrow. 12 FLORIDA MAGAZINE.