Casey was out of work and sitting at home as the 1944 season opened. No spring training, no phone calls.
At last, the American Association, where he had managed Toledo for six years, came calling.
The Milwaukee Brewers (the minor-league team from which today’s major-league team took its name) had been purchased by twenty-seven-year-old Bill Veeck in 1941. Veeck’s father had been president of the Cubs, and, together with some friends of his father’s, he found enough cash to buy the Brewers. It was the start of a career that would lead “Sports Shirt Bill” to the Hall of Fame.
He was called “Sports Shirt Bill” because his practice of disdaining ties and wearing open-collared shirts was so attention-getting at the time; he seemed to be the only person in baseball besides Ted Williams who shed accepted standards and practices.
His reputation for showmanship began in Milwaukee, where he thought every game was a promotion opportunity, even if it meant having a fruit-and-vegetable night, when some lucky fan would go home with a basket of peaches.
His manager in Milwaukee was the Chicago Cubs legend Charlie (“Jolly Cholly”) Grimm, Casey’s teammate on the 1919 Pirates. Grimm was a banjo-playing former infielder turned broadcaster. He had many friends in the game and was a delight on the baseball scene for decades.
Grimm won the American Association pennant with the Brewers in 1943, and got off to an 11-2 start in 1944. At that point, the Cubs decided to change managers; they fired Jimmy Wilson and asked Grimm to leave Milwaukee and take the job. As Grimm would remember it:
Before I could accept this chance to come back to the Cubs, I told them I’d first have to get a replacement for the Milwaukee job, one who was acceptable to Bill Veeck.
My choice was Casey Stengel, who had announced his retirement after a somewhat dismal experience in Boston….I never thought of anyone except Casey as the man to free me so I could return to the Cubs….I put in a call for him in California. He was glad to chat with me but manage the Brewers—never!
“I’ve had enough,” he told me from Glendale. I didn’t take it for a final answer. I sent a cable to Guadalcanal, hoping it would reach Veeck [who was stationed there with the Marines].
It did.
“Oh no, not Casey Stengel,” was the gist of his first message.
Another one brought a half-hearted okay. I called Stengel, being careful not to tell him of Veeck’s first reaction. “For you and Bill I’ll do it,” Casey finally conceded.
Actually, Grimm’s portrayal of Veeck’s reaction was mild, perhaps given his continuing role as a stockholder in the team. In actuality, Veeck thought very little of Stengel, and let it be known in letters to his front office after his hiring, letters that found their way into the newspapers. For instance: “I’d like to have a complete explanation of where Stengel comes from. Who hired him? Who suggested him? For how much and how long? I don’t want anything to do with Stengel nor do I want him to have anything to do with anything I have a voice in.” He then cited seven reasons why he hated the selection of Casey:
First, Stengel has never managed a winner. In my humble opinion, he is a very poor manager.
Second, he has been closely connected with Bob Quinn and the operation of the Boston Braves. This in itself is enough to damn him.
Third, I don’t believe Stengel is a good judge of players and so can be of no value in amassing future clubs.
Fourth, from what I know of Stengel he is tight-fisted and this will not prove acceptable.
Fifth, from my observation, Stengel is mentally a second-division major leaguer. That is, he is entirely satisfied with a mediocre ball club as long as Stengel and his alleged wit are appreciated.
Sixth, I have no confidence in his ability and rather than be continuously worried I’d rather dispose of the whole damn thing.
Seventh, Stengel doesn’t fit in at all with the future—and I’m looking as usual, for the long haul.
If these aren’t reasons enough, I don’t like him and I want no part of him. If Stengel has an ironclad contract and it will be expensive to break, I guess we’ll have to be stuck with him. If not, replace him immediately with Ivy Griffin.
For his 1967 biography of Casey, Joe Durso got Veeck to write an introduction. He wrote, “Although I had known Casey casually since early childhood, I still thought of him as a clown…a guy who didn’t win. I had bought the then ‘public image.’ ”
And so Casey packed his bags and headed for Milwaukee to rejoin the American Association, after nine years managing in the National League.
It was a comedown for sure, but this was May, and he was tired of the home life. He was off his crutches. He was only fifty-three. It was time to go back to work.
And it would be fun! He was hailed as a hero when he returned to Toledo (he made two speeches in one day at local functions there on May 22), and he was hailed as a hometown boy when he returned to Kansas City. In Kansas City, he could visit with his brother and sister and visit his old house. He had seen them only occasionally since 1931.
PFC Veeck, just thirty-one, was not a factor; he was at war. He always blew hot and cold on Casey. He barely mentioned him in his own best-selling memoir, Veeck—As in Wreck. By the end of May, conceding that Casey had won over the press, Veeck wrote that he “should be OK until the season ends.”
Casey arrived at Borchert Field, the Brewers’ home park, on May 6, where an overflow crowd of 10,044 saw Milwaukee take a doubleheader from Columbus. Grimm had handed Casey a terrific ball club. He discarded his brace and coached third again.
Borchert was built in 1887, and showed it. On June 14, a month into Casey’s term, a storm literally tore the roof off the first-base side of the ballpark; thirty-five people were injured in a mad scramble to get to the field.
The Brewers had no major-league affiliation, although they had a close “friendship” with the nearby Cubs—because of Grimm, who still was a stockholder in the team, and because Phil Wrigley, the Cubs’ owner, also put some of his own money into the purchase of the Brewers. Casey got to juggle ten .300 hitters in and out of the lineup, and the team led the league with 135 home runs and a .307 team average. They scored a hundred runs more than their nearest rival.
Twenty-two of the twenty-eight players on the team that year saw major-league experience at some point, including Dale Long, who played for Casey on his last Yankee team, sixteen years later. Frank Secory, who would umpire games when Casey managed the Mets, was one of his outfielders on the Brewers. The Brewers went 91-49 and won the American Association pennant by seven games. Casey had managed his first championship team since Toledo in 1927.
Alas, Milwaukee lost the playoff series, held among first-division teams, to third-place Louisville, dropping the last three games.
Casey was not invited back for 1945; he resigned after the season rather than get fired. Veeck, seriously injured in the war (he lost a leg), would be home to run the team and did not want to deal with Casey on a daily basis.
Stengel learned that he was on the way out when informed by The Milwaukee Journal’s sports editor. “I took this job to help out my friend Charlie Grimm, because he said he could not take the job with the Chicago Cubs unless I did. The understanding was that I would just finish up the season, and that would give them time to find a manager for 1945.”
The Milwaukee press loved Casey, as did the press wherever he played or managed. At season’s end, he threw dinners for his players and for the writers. A few fans started a “Bring Back Casey” movement, but Casey knew that he and Veeck were not intended to work together. He departed without a fuss. Veeck and Stengel met quietly over the winter in California, and a small attempt was made to mend fences. Veeck now offered to have Casey return in 1945. (In fact, about a year later, he invited Casey to join his group in buying the Cleveland Indians.) But in his own mind, Casey had already moved on.
At the Winter Meetings in December, George Weiss asked him if he would like to manage the Yankees’ farm team in Kansas City in 1945—not only his hometown team, but the team that had first signed him, out of Central High in 1910.
This was one of the most significant career moves he would make, for it would formally put him in the Yankee organization. He knew Weiss, but now he would come to know everyone in the Yankee operation involved in player development and minor-league administration. It was a good path for him to be on.
Who knew where this would lead? It would be his first assignment in the Yankees’ organization, and in fact, the first time he would work for a team affiliated with the American League. New doors were opening. Maybe—did he dare to think it?—it would put him on a path to succeed Joe McCarthy as manager one day in New York.
However, he came to see it in smaller terms, “I took over a weak Yankee farm team as a favor to George Weiss, who had sold me players on the installment plan when I was with clubs that couldn’t afford to pay for them outright,” Casey reflected in later years.
The Kansas City press loved this story. A testimonial dinner to welcome Casey was held at Kansas City’s Muehlebach Hotel, attended by Weiss and one of the new Yankee co-owners, Del Webb (he, Dan Topping, and Larry MacPhail had just purchased the team from the Jacob Ruppert estate). “So much fan enthusiasm has been kindled here that the smile on Business Manager Roy Hamey’s face is real for the first time in a couple of seasons. Fans are asking for opening day tickets and the sun shines again,” reported The Sporting News.
The Blues weren’t much of a team, despite their eight-year Yankee affiliation, and the pay wasn’t much, but Casey could see his brother and sister, sleep in his old house if he chose to, and visit with old friends whenever he wanted. They played in Blues Stadium (where the Athletics and later the Royals played), which then had a capacity of 17,476.
The Blues finished seventh in 1945. They hit only thirty-five home runs as a team and didn’t give the fans much to cheer for, although season attendance tripled—to just around a hundred thousand. Milwaukee won the pennant again. Late in the summer, a free-for-all took place on the field during a 17–7 romp by the Blues over the Brewers, and when the dust cleared, Casey was found at the bottom of the pile of players. He was fifty-five years old.
There were not many notable names on his team, but he had his oil partner Johnny Cooney, age forty-four, back for one last year as a player/coach. It was Cooney’s twenty-fifth season as a player, and it felt like most of them were with or for Casey. Clarence “Cuddles” Marshall, a right-hander, was the only player on the team who would later play for Casey in New York.
It had been quite a year. The death of President Roosevelt, the ascension of Casey’s Kansas City “neighbor” Harry Truman to the presidency, the dropping of the atomic bombs over Japan, the end of the wars in both Japan and Europe—and, it was hoped, the end of baseball’s wartime slumber.
Just days after the season ended, the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League fired their manager, Billy Raimondi, and Casey’s name appeared in stories as a possible successor.
The owners, Brick Laws and Joe Blumenfeld, along with Cookie DeVincenzi, the team’s general manager, reached out to Casey, DeVincenzi taking the lead in the negotiations. They brought him up from Glendale but couldn’t nail down a deal right there. The next morning, with Casey already back home, they received a wire: I’LL TRY IT FOR A YEAR. STENGEL.
He resigned his Kansas City post.
On October 17, he was signed to a twelve-thousand-dollar contract. George Weiss actually made the announcement, noting that the Yankees had “friendly relations” with Oakland, even if not a direct affiliation. “We are sorry to lose Casey,” said Weiss, “but it has always been our policy never to stand in the way of a manager who wants to move on. We thought Casey did a fine job for the Blues and I’m sure he will prove a popular manager at Oakland.”
Oakland had gotten consistently good reports on him from the local Yankee scouts, Bill Essick (based in Los Angeles) and Joe Devine (in San Francisco), the two who had signed Joe DiMaggio a decade earlier. Brick Laws frequently played golf with Del Webb. Relationships were building.