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Casey at the Oaks by Steve Treder of The Hardball Times June 21, 2005 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/casey-at-the-oaks/ Casey Stengel’s managerial career through 1945 could best be described as unimpressive. It was lengthy—there was that to be said for it—but in the better part of 20 seasons of managing in both the minors and majors, Stengel-led teams achieved little success and much mediocrity. Stengel was a good major league ballplayer: a solid defensive outfielder (fast enough to handle center, though he spent most of his time in right field) with a highly effective bat (career OPS+ of 119). A roughly comparable modern player might be someone along the lines of Ray Lankford or Matt Lawton. Stengel was also, of course, extremely gregarious, alert and intelligent. Even as a young player, his primary persona as a fun-loving jokester barely concealed a serious and highly motivated student of the game. The two managers for whom Stengel most played both took a genuine liking to him, and he could very properly be said to have been a protégé of both Wilbert Robinson and John McGraw (both of whom were themselves protégés of the remarkable 1890s Baltimore Orioles manager Ned Hanlon). Judge Emil Fuchs, the owner of the Boston Braves, also was impressed with Stengel, and in May of 1925 Fuchs offered Stengel, at that point a soon-to-be 35-year-old (though passing as soon-to-be 34) platoon outfielder for the Braves, the job as president and playing manager for the Worcester ball club of the Eastern League that Fuchs had just purchased. The 40-Year Career Begins Worcester was in last place when Stengel took over, but he was immediately successful, guiding the team to a 70-55 record and a third-place finish (Stengel’s own .320 average with 10 homers in 334 at-bats didn’t hurt). This caught the notice of McGraw, who then hired Stengel to manage the Toledo Mud Hens of the Triple-A American Association (of which McGraw was part owner). Stengel would manage the Mud Hens for six years, and his teams there would kind of bounce all around the league: fourth, first, sixth, eighth, third and eighth. Back to the Majors In 1932 Wilbert Robinson finally retired after an 18-year run as manager of Brooklyn. (Robinson’s stature was such that throughout his tenure there the team was known as the Robins.) Max Carey was hired to replace him, and Stengel was brought back to the majors as a coach under Carey. Two years later Stengel, at the age of 43 (though record books at the time still listed him as 42), took over as Brooklyn manager. His teams there were drearily bland, winning 71, 70 and 67 games, and finishing sixth, fifth and seventh. The Dodgers fired him as manager before the 1937 season, even though his contract still had a year to run; the press made much fun of the fact that Stengel had so impressed the Dodgers that they paid him to not manage the team. It’s worth knowing that Stengel didn’t spend his paid vacation season of 1937 loafing. He and his wife Edna spent much of that hot summer in east Texas learning the oil business and making substantial and shrewd investments that would help provide them with ongoing financial security. In 1938, Stengel and Edna, who was a very sharp businesswoman with means independent of her husband's, made another major investment of $43,000—a whole lot of money in 1938. He became a part owner of the Boston Bees (as the erstwhile Braves franchise was known from 1936 through 1940), and under the deal the team hired him as manager. Stengel had a six-year run in Boston, and his teams there were just as grindingly mediocre as they had been in Brooklyn. He had just one winning season, a 77-75 fifth-place performance in 1938. After that came four seventh-place finishes followed by a sixth place. By the end of this string, things weren’t looking very bright for Stengel. His biographer Robert Creamer writes: …just before the 1943 season was to begin, Casey was hit by an automobile in Boston as he was crossing a street on a rainy night. He suffered a badly broken leg and was laid up for several weeks. Even an accident as serious as that somehow seemed comical because Stengel was involved. [Frank] Frisch, managing Pittsburgh, had often mocked Casey about the poor quality of his ball club, and he sent a wire to Stengel at the hospital, addressed in care of the psychiatric ward, that said, “Your attempt at suicide fully understood. Deepest sympathy you didn’t succeed.” Stengel returned to manage the team for the balance of the season, but he was bothered by the leg— he would walk with a painful-looking hobble for the rest of his life—and it was another dismal year. After the season, new ownership took over the Braves, bought out Stengel’s stock and fired him. Literally adding insult to injury, Boston Record columnist Dave Egan summed up the season this way: “The man who did the most for baseball in Boston in 1943 was the motorist who ran Stengel down two days before the opening game and kept him away from the Braves for two months.” Back to the Minors Stengel found another job in baseball in May of 1944, going to Bill Veeck's Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association to replace manager Charlie Grimm, who had been hired by the Chicago Cubs. The Brewers were in first place when Stengel took over, and he successfully guided them to the pennant, his first since his 1927 Mud Hens. But it was a minor league pennant in a wartime year, and it didn’t attract much national attention. George Weiss, farm director of the New York Yankees, then hired Stengel to manage his Kansas City Blues team in the American Association for 1945. He was back in his hometown of “K.C.,” but Stengel didn’t enjoy success with the wartime-depleted Blues, finishing seventh. He wasn’t invited back for 1946. Stengel was now 55. He had had two major league managerial opportunities and had achieved nothing more than sustained mediocrity in both. The likelihood of his ever managing again in the majors seemed highly remote. He was financially secure, and he contemplated retirement with Edna in their sunny Glendale, California home. The Turning Point Perhaps the only job offer Stengel would have accepted at that point was one that would allow him to stay near his wife on the west coast, and that was what he got. Clarence “Brick” Laws, owner of the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, asked Stengel to manage his club for 1946. The Oaks were generally considered “the other team” in the Bay Area, languishing in the shadow of the high-powered San Francisco Seals, who had won the PCL championship in 1943, 1944 and 1945 and were a perennial contender. The Oaks had won just two PCL pennants since the league’s founding in 1903 and none since 1927. But Laws was a smart and aggressive baseball operator, and he was committed to converting the also-ran Oaks into a power. Stengel was intrigued by the challenge, and of course also by the Pacific Coast League lifestyle, which would keep him in pleasant west coast environs all year long and provide several lengthy road trips to southern California (the PCL had franchises in Los Angeles and Hollywood as well as San Diego). Four years later, Stengel would be the manager of the New York Yankees, winning the pennant in close dramatic fashion (over Boston, which had to be especially sweet for Stengel), cruising to a World Series victory (over Brooklyn, which also had to feel really good), and being named the major leagues’ Manager of the Year. How did he get from being essentially washed up in Oakland in 1946 to the toast of New York in 1949? Very simply, by managing the Oaks in 1946, 1947 and 1948 in a manner that dazzled everyone who witnessed it. No one had ever seen anything quite like this before. 1946 Let's take a look at each of those Oakland teams. First, here's the 1946 edition, which finished a very close second to the Seals, winning 111 games and losing 72, a .607 winning percentage. (the PCL customarily played a season of at least 180 games.) In the postseason tournament, the Oaks defeated the fourth-place Los Angeles Angels four games to three to advance to the championship final, where they lost to the Seals four games to two. This was a dramatic improvement over the 1945 Oaks, who had been 90-93 and in fifth place. Attendance boomed to a franchise-record 634,000, nearly double the Oaks' previous best, which had been set way back in 1924. It was in every respect the most successful Oakland season in a very long time. Here are the key 1946 Oaks' batters (for positions at which players appeared in fewer than 10 games, just the position is noted): Player B Age G by POS G AB R HR RBI BB SO BA Les Scarsella L 32 1B-115 121 428 76 22 91 46 35 .332 Mickey Burnett R 27 2B-95,SS-51,3B 155 563 79 1 42 49 86 .238 Ray Hamrick R 24 SS-103 103 346 34 1 35 30 46 .266 Bill Hart R 33 3B-114,SS-16 134 458 49 6 70 48 67 .227 Brooks Holder L 30 OF-148 155 477 88 13 59 131 29 .283 Wally Westlake R 25 OF-126 136 429 60 7 57 30 66 .315 Hersh Martin B 36 OF-130,3B 139 447 62 10 46 77 44 .255 Billy Raimondi R 32 C-111 112 347 34 0 32 38 31 .300 Max Marshall L 32 OF-99 103 345 53 9 56 40 32 .278 Tony Sabol R 27 2B-62,OF-24,3B 109 301 40 0 23 28 44 .246 Eddie Kearse R 30 C-64 73 209 21 1 30 23 21 .273 Vic Buccola L 24 1B-54 54 196 26 4 22 12 20 .265 Arky Biggs R ? 3B-30,SS,2B,1B 50 159 16 0 12 16 10 .245 Pete Fox R 37 OF-41 57 155 15 0 14 10 21 .258 Gene Bearden L 25 P-32,1B-14 67 138 19 2 18 11 20 .246 Babe Martin R 26 C-25 32 82 4 1 9 9 17 .244 And here are the key pitchers: Pitcher T Age G GS CG IP W L SV H BB SO ERA Rugger Ardizoia R 26 38 25 15 207 15 7 3 187 76 105 2.83 Cotton Pippen R 35 30 24 11 184 14 11 0 189 56 58 2.84 Floyd Speer R 33 38 21 8 184 11 8 5 158 56 72 2.93 Spec Shea R 25 24 21 15 174 15 5 0 125 60 124 1.66 Gene Bearden L 25 32 15 9 167 15 4 2 139 75 81 3.13 Bryan Stephens R 25 29 20 10 159 10 9 0 141 65 91 3.40 Charlie Gassaway L 27 19 13 7 89 7 5 1 70 39 52 3.13 Tom Hafey R 32 31 12 7 137 6 8 3 126 38 62 2.63 Ralph Buxton R 32 31 11 4 119 10 5 3 109 32 68 2.57 Bull Palica R ? 23 11 3 74 5 3 1 73 24 28 2.55 Hy Vandenberg R 40 11 5 2 46 1 5 0 61 19 17 5.28 Two things stand out right away. First is that the Oaks weren't a young team. Understand, of course, that like most other PCL franchises, they weren't a "farm" team; this was an independent operation, in business for the purpose of winning games and making money, not developing talent per se. That said, even by PCL standards, the Oaks were a distinctly veteran ball club. Second, and far more remarkable, was Stengel's extraordinarily full use of the roster. This was a team that played 183 games, yet only two players saw action in as many as 140, and only one pitcher had more than 185 innings. Liberal use of platooning is obvious, not just on a left-right basis (although there was that going on in the outfield), but also in the way Stengel juggled his light-hitting infielders, clearly pinch-hitting for them on a regular basis. The pitching staff was a particularly egalitarian environment, with 12 pitchers starting at least 11 games, and no one relieving in more than 20. This was just not how business was customarily conducted in the PCL. The pennant-winning 1946 San Francisco Seals, for example, used Ferris Fain and Hugh Luby in 180 and 176 games, respectively, and both had well over 700 plate appearanes. Seals' ace pitcher Larry Jansen started 38 games, winning 30 of them and pitching 321 innings. Every other team in the league except the last-place Seattle Rainiers featured batters with well over 600 at-bats and pitchers with well over 250 innings. The Oaks were able to win 111 games despite having almost no individual stars. The only Oakland players with stats among the league leaders were Les Scarsella, whose 22 home runs in a part-time role tied for second in the league; Spec Shea, whose 1.66 ERA was second-best in the league (to Jansen's 1.57); and Brooks Holder, whose 131 walks led the league. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers doesn't specify Shea as a knuckleballer, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that he threw a knuckler at least some of the time. Gene Bearden definitely was a knuckleballer, and in any case the Oaks' pitching staff was a collection of no-names who overpowered nobody, yet they allowed the second-fewest runs in the league. 1947 For 1947, several of the team's best young players were gone. Shea was picked up by the Yankees, as was Rugger Ardizoia. Wally Westlake was acquired by Pittsburgh and Bryan Stephens by Cleveland. So how did Stengel and the Oaks fit the pieces together? Key batters, 1947: Player B Age G by POS G AB R HR RBI BB SO BA Les Scarsella L 33 1B-87 89 341 47 13 56 30 29 .255 Dario Lodigiani R 31 2B-124,3B-17 141 498 83 11 92 76 29 .311 Ray Hamrick R 25 SS-147 147 473 44 0 52 43 47 .266 Gene Lillard R 33 3B-67,C-26,P-2,OF 110 291 45 7 46 34 45 .258 Brooks Holder L 31 OF-163 172 599 137 16 78 136 39 .311 Vince DiMaggio R 34 OF-138 140 473 80 22 81 36 87 .241 Hersh Martin B 37 OF-92 116 294 48 4 48 52 13 .361 Billy Raimondi R 33 C-147 152 418 55 0 47 54 20 .297 Maurice Van Robays R 32 1B-70,OF-34 137 380 52 8 77 30 43 .295 Mel Duezabou R 27 OF-73 88 238 33 5 24 33 30 .315 Chuck Workman L 32 OF-63,3B 81 213 47 12 40 41 26 .268 Glenn Crawford L 33 2B-31,3B-20,SS-19,OF 87 215 36 6 30 35 12 .298 Mickey Burnett R 28 SS-51,2B,3B 98 224 36 3 26 18 20 .295 Roy Hughes R 36 3B-48,SS 48 183 32 0 14 23 6 .295 Tony Sabol R 28 OF-31,3B-30,2B-19,SS 105 167 31 0 15 15 17 .287 Nick Etten L 33 1B-41 46 140 27 4 30 22 6 .300 Will Hafey R 23 P-31,OF,1B,3B 87 157 15 4 24 4 24 .280 Eddie Kearse R 31 C-57 58 123 9 2 15 20 15 .252 Key pitchers, 1947: Pitcher T Age G GS CG IP W L SV H BB SO ERA Gene Bearden L 26 26 21 17 198 16 7 0 185 82 80 2.86 Floyd Speer R 34 45 24 8 189 16 14 3 206 74 83 4.38 Damon Hayes R 28 35 22 12 183 12 10 0 200 84 96 3.93 Charlie Gassaway L 28 45 24 8 183 12 11 2 227 61 89 4.23 Ralph Buxton R 33 29 16 4 125 8 8 1 128 42 52 3.89 Dewey Soriano R ? 21 18 6 114 7 7 1 134 54 59 4.82 Cotton Pippen R 36 9 8 3 52 1 5 1 66 15 11 3.98 Lefty Wilkie L 32 33 15 4 135 7 7 1 163 43 49 4.67 Will Hafey R 23 30 8 5 107 7 5 1 110 49 40 3.28 Tom Hafey R 33 31 8 4 98 7 6 3 127 44 50 6.15 Hugh Mulcahy R 33 31 7 1 89 1 6 3 118 40 20 6.67 The 1947 Oaks dropped back in regular season performance, going 96-90 and finishing in fourth place. This was enough, however, to once again enter into the league's postseason tournament, where they enjoyed the pleasure of defeating the Seals (who had tied for first in the regular season before losing a one-game playoff to Los Angeles) in the first round four games to one. Then the Oaks lost the finals to the Angels four games to one. But it was another successful season overall, with attendance at a robust 590,000 and Stengel now firmly ensconced as an enormous fan favorite. This Oaks team was, if anything, even more adroitly handled by Stengel. Holder, who again led the league in walks, was the only true regular. Virtually the entire remainder of the roster was an intricate tapestry of complex multi-position platooning; without a single batter in the top 10 in the league in RBIs, the Oaks led the league in runs scored with 929. And Stengel navigated a 186-game regular season without using a single pitcher in as many as 25 starts, 22 relief appearances or 200 innings. For 1948 the Oaks lost Gene Bearden (promoted by the Cleveland Indians, who owned his contract), far and away their best pitcher in '47 and a useful pinch-hitter as well, overall hitting .283 in 41 games and 99 at-bats. (Yet another interesting element of Stengel's method was to make liberal use of Bearden, as well as Will Hafey and Tom Hafey, in pitcher/pinch-hitter/position player utility roles.) But essentially the rest of the team would be back, including veteran first baseman Nick Etten, who had done well filling in for the injured Les Scarsella in late 1947, as well as a brash, skinny young East Bay infielder named Billy Martin, who had joined the Oaks at the tail end of the '47 season. He'd been promoted from Phoenix in the Arizona-Texas League, where at age 19 he had led the league in hits, doubles, RBI and batting average. 1948 Here are the 1948 Oaks' primary batters: Player B Age G by POS G AB R HR RBI BB SO BA Nick Etten L 34 1B-162 164 578 115 43 155 91 47 .313 Billy Martin R 20 2B-124,3B,SS 132 401 60 3 42 18 30 .277 Merrill Combs L 28 SS-133,3B-40,2B 175 580 91 10 69 83 51 .271 Dario Lodigiani R 32 3B-91,2B-78,SS 162 581 77 7 72 48 31 .303 Brooks Holder L 32 OF-138 148 482 99 10 57 97 24 .297 George Metkovich L 27 OF-132,1B 134 500 116 23 88 66 54 .336 Loyd Christopher R 28 OF120 124 352 56 14 61 39 43 .318 Billy Raimondi R 34 C-120 126 302 40 0 31 33 23 .285 Mel Duezabou R 28 OF-112 132 389 69 7 52 35 41 .303 Les Scarsella L 34 OF-75,1B-17 111 329 60 14 61 39 43 .271 Cookie Lavagetto R 35 3B-73,2B 86 286 54 3 38 29 18 .304 Ray Hamrick R 26 SS-71,2B-23,3B 101 243 30 1 26 19 21 .259 Maurice Van Robays R 33 1B-35,OF-13,3B 87 192 26 2 25 15 14 .313 Will Hafey R 24 P-30,OF 75 131 14 3 34 11 13 .282 Ed Fernandes B 30 C-47 62 91 12 1 21 34 14 .297 In addition, in 1948 Ernie Lombardi produced a portion of the following PCL stat line for the Oaks. No resource covering this era that I'm aware of breaks minor league multi-team players' records down by team, so it's unknown how many of these 102 games Lombardi played for the Oaks. My estimate is that it was more than half, probably about two-thirds: Player B Age G by POS G AB R HR RBI BB SO BA Ernie Lombardi R 40 C-80 102 284 25 11 55 22 18 .264 Here are the 1948 Oaks' primary pitchers: Pitcher T Age G GS CG IP W L SV H BB SO ERA Charlie Gassaway L 29 43 30 13 198 15 8 2 202 59 68 3.09 Earl Jones L 29 39 26 9 196 13 6 1 184 110 82 2.98 Lefty Wilkie L 33 41 25 7 185 11 6 1 212 70 56 3.79 Will Hafey R 24 30 25 13 183 13 10 0 182 102 75 4.48 Les Webber R 33 32 14 5 131 8 5 2 163 55 68 5.50 Floyd Speer R 35 49 6 0 108 12 3 2 128 42 55 5.17 Ralph Buxton R 34 34 7 4 96 13 3 8 78 29 52 3.19 Jim Tobin R 35 10 3 1 44 2 1 2 41 10 11 2.25 Bob Klinger R 40 16 1 0 28 2 4 3 26 14 11 4.18 In addition, both of the following pitchers spent most (again I estimate probably about two-thirds) of 1948 with Oakland, while also pitching for the last-place Sacramento Solons: Pitcher T Age G GS CG IP W L SV H BB SO ERA Jack Salveson R 34 41 33 15 245 13 18 1 300 55 95 4.74 Lou Tost L 37 42 26 11 226 12 15 0 236 68 107 3.70 It was, all things considered, the most successful season in the history of the Oakland Oaks. They went down to the wire in a thrilling pennant race against the archrival Seals, and prevailed by a two-game margin, at 114-74 (.606) over San Francisco's 112-76. The Oaks then defeated the Angels four games to two while the Seals lost to the Seattle Rainiers four games to one. In the finals the Oaks beat the Rainiers four games to one. They were PCL champions for the first time since 1927. The 1948 Oaks were nicknamed "The Nine Old Men" by the press, in acknowledgement of their extreme veteran character. Being managed by the nearly-60 Stengel and playing in an antiquated wooden ballpark nicknamed the "splinter emporium" just added to the colorful underdog ambience. The 1948 Oaks did enjoy the services of a couple of offensive stars: Nick Etten was second in the league in both homers and RBI, and Catfish Metkovich was fourth in the league in average. But once again it was the depth of the roster and Stengel's frantically intricate deployment of it that stood out. Nowhere was this more evident than the pitching staff, where Stengel won 114 games with no pitcher winning more than 15 or working as many as 200 innings, in a league in which every other team had at least one pitcher with well over 200 innings, most with several. All told, it was a star-making performance on Stengel's part. He was named by The Sporting News as Minor League Manager of the Year, his first managerial honor in 21 seasons of work. After a long career in which he'd been recognized as a clown but rarely respected as a competent professional, it was a dramatic late bloom. The Triumphant Return George Weiss, who had hired Stengel to manage Kansas City in 1945, was now the GM in New York, and he came calling again. When Stengel was announced as the new Yankee manager for 1949, those who hadn't been paying attention to his Pacific Coast League work were stunned, and the choice was widely hooted. The hooting would stop in 1949, and it would become a distant memory as Stengel, displaying exactly the complex-platooning method he had demonstrated in Oakland, would go on to be named TSN's Major League Manager of the Year every season from 1949 through 1953. Stengel would manage the Yankees for 12 seasons in which they would win 10 pennants and seven World Series. It was simply the most successful managerial stint in the history of baseball. Stengel would be elected to the Hall of Fame in 1966. The following are players who played under Stengel in the major leagues who went on to become major league managers: Hank Bauer Yogi Berra Jerry Coleman Roger Craig Kerby Farrell Gil Hodges Tommy Holmes Ralph Houk Billy Hunter Darrell Johnson Eddie Joost Eddie Lopat Al Lopez Jim Marshall Billy Martin Roy McMillan Norm Sherry Frank Skaff Zack Taylor Don Zimmer In addition, legendary University of Southern California baseball coach Rod Dedeaux briefly played for Stengel in Brooklyn in 1935.