Nobody could read the tea leaves of baseball like Casey. After a half-century in the game, he knew all the signs. Nothing could surprise him.
A few days after the series, he got a call to visit with Topping and Webb at Del Webb’s suite in the Waldorf Astoria. Casey took a cab from the Essex House, and as soon as he walked in and saw that there was no contract on the table waiting to be signed, he knew it was over.
That had always been the procedure, and he’d seen this coming. As Casey wrote in his autobiography:
The last month and a half of the 1960 season I could tell I was through….The attitude of people in the office that I knew and liked was different. They knew that things were going to change.
I said to Mr. Weiss near the end of the season, “You’re not running this club the way you were before.”
And he dropped his head and said, “I’m afraid you’re right.”
Topping and Webb explained their new retirement plan, including the rule that no one in the organization work beyond the age of sixty-five, and there was really nothing Casey could say. They weren’t looking for a discussion; the decision was made. This must have been particularly difficult for Webb, who genuinely liked Casey and could always be counted on to fly to any testimonial affair honoring him. Their relationship went back long before Casey’s Yankee days.
Topping brought up a “generous” parting gift for Casey, a $158,747.25 check he would be receiving. Casey was a banker; he knew this was nonsense. It was due him from the team’s profit-sharing plan, in which he and all full-time employees except the players were enrolled. It was no gift at all. There was no talk of making him a senior adviser or consultant—something they would offer George Weiss, who was also getting a pink slip (he was sixty-six), but would stay on the payroll.
Casey had but one request, which was granted. He wanted the announcement to be made at a press conference, so that he could be among his writers, his greatest loyalists. This was agreed upon, difficult though it may have been for the owners to partake in such an event. Webb, in fact, found an excuse not to be there: he had business in Los Angeles.
And so, on Tuesday, October 18, 1960, Bob Fishel and his first-year assistant, Bill Guilfoile, began dialing the phones, summoning the New York press corps to Le Salon Bleu in the Savoy Hilton (the former Savoy-Plaza). The corps included reporters, photographers, and columnists from the New York newspapers and wire services, and reporters and producers from the TV, newsreel, and radio stations. There were enough “extra bodies” to swell the attendance to nearly 150.
The hotel was next door to the team offices, across the street from the Plaza Hotel. It was a two-block walk for Casey from the Essex House, where he had more or less holed up since the team got home. He took a cab; he was in no condition to chat with fans on the way over. When he arrived, at seven minutes past twelve, and saw the packed room, he may have felt empowered by their presence, knowing how pro-Casey they tended to be.
At the front of the room was a microphone, with no head table or podium. Topping went to the mike, as Casey more or less blended in with the reporters in the front row.
Reading from a prepared text, Topping noted that Casey “has been—deservedly—the highest-paid manager in baseball history, and a great manager, he was to be rewarded with $160,000 to do with as he pleases.”
He never said the word “fired,” or even “not coming back.”
A reporter shouted, “Do you mean he’s through? Has he resigned?”
Topping never answered the question. Casey went to the mike.
Speaking somewhat hesitantly, with his hands in his pockets, he said, “Mr. Webb and Mr. Topping have started a program for the Yankees. They needed a solution as to when to discharge a man on account of age. My services are not desired any longer by this club. I told them if this was their idea not to worry about me.”
He began talking about changes he might have made if he were coming back in 1961, saying, “I’ve always handed in my own lineups, with none of the office people telling me what to do.”
This wasn’t what the writers were looking for.
“Casey, were you fired?” shouted a voice.
“No, I wasn’t fired,” he answered. “I was paid up in full.”
There was some awkward laughter.
He smiled. “Quit, fired, whatever you please, I don’t care.”
A seventy-nine-year-old fan who had wandered into the room had the audacity to walk up to Casey and shake his hand. The reporters screamed, “Go away, go away!”
Another voice was heard. “Casey, an Associated Press bulletin says you’re fired. What do you think about that?”
The AP’s Joe Reichler had spotted a pay phone—he always had his dime ready—and was calling in the story.
“What do I care what the AP says,” said Casey. “Anyway, what about the UP?” The UP, which stood for United Press, had two years earlier become United Press International.
And it was over. The press conference and the reign of Casey Stengel, winner of seven World Series and ten pennants in twelve years, and the man who may have done more for baseball through the force of his personality than anyone except Babe Ruth.
Casey had a couple of drinks at the portable bar set up in the room, and he did a few more radio interviews. He even sat on a couch with Topping and did a joint interview, awkward though it must have been.
“I’m just sorry Casey isn’t 50 years old,” said Topping, “but all business comes to a point when it’s best for the future to make a change.” He insisted this decision would have been made even if the Yankees had won the World Series.
Interviewed in Los Angeles, Webb said: “It’s always been common knowledge that Topping runs the baseball club. He’s president of the club and we each own 50 percent. Topping is the baseball man. I’m in the construction business but I’m co-owner of the club. Casey had a sick spell last season and at his age he might find the strain of managing the club too much for him. We felt we couldn’t afford to allow ourselves to get into a position of losing our manager through illness in the middle of the season.”
By two-thirty, it was all winding down. Someone from the front office stopped by to ask about his plans. Casey said, “I’m taking a jet home, and I’m charging it to the club. A man gets his transportation home even if they don’t want him anymore.”
A waitress came by and said, “I got to kiss you,” and did.
“Thank you very much,” said Casey.
He headed for the door and out into the brisk October weather. This time, he would walk back to his hotel, along Central Park South. If people wanted to shake his hand and wish him well, that was fine with him. He told the front desk “no calls,” but that led to a deluge of telegrams from the baseball world, since most people in the baseball world knew where he lived.
Reaction was swift. “Gigantic organizations such as General Motors and United States Steel have retirement deadlines, but they have sense enough to use them with flexibility,” wrote Arthur Daley in the Times, in a column titled “A Sad Day for Baseball.” “However, a puny organization like the Yankees blindly adheres to the letter of its own law. It’s a new law, too. It could have waited for implementation until Casey had decided to quit on his own.”
“I’ll never make the mistake of being 70 again,” said Casey.
“My writers” threw a party for Casey the very next night, at the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf. Even with such short notice, Commissioner Ford Frick, American League President Joe Cronin, Branch Rickey (working on the possibility of a new league, the Continental), the power lawyer Bill Shea, the West Point football coach Red Blaik, the football Giants owner Jack Mara, the New York Knicks president, Ned Irish, and former Postmaster General Jim Farley all attended, as did Skowron, Howard, McDougald, Weiss, Hamey, Lopat (to be bitterly dismissed as pitching coach the next day), and, yes, Dan Topping.
Said Topping, “I feel like Khrushchev talking into the United Nations,” which had happened just a week earlier, when he infamously banged his shoe on his desk.
“I don’t want to put ridicule on Mr. Topping, who has the nerve and guts to come here tonight,” noted Casey; in a rare sentimental moment, he added, “It’s the first time I was ever near tears. I was never shocked so much in my life.”
On Pittsburgh Hilton stationery, the petition signed at the World Series by thirty-seven writers was delivered to the Yankees, urging them to keep Casey.
He stayed in New York a few extra days, but he told Edna there was no need for her to come east. Before he left for California, he taped a Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall show, (it aired in November), in which he kiddingly said of Kubek, “He’s a player without a weakness, except that he can’t catch a bad hop.” He was very polished on the show, which had him reading cue cards. Perry said, “You have so many trophies for your mantle,” and Casey responded “I don’t even have a Mantle anymore.” Roy Face and Hal Smith, in Pirates uniforms, came out and serenaded Casey with guitars.
Sure enough, the Yankees named Ralph Houk as their new manager on October 20 at the Savoy Hilton. It was not nearly as well attended. Part of the reason for releasing Casey was that they did not want to lose Houk, who was getting offers from other teams, particularly Detroit. And they knew Boston had eyes on him as well. (Houk wound up managing both of them after his Yankee career ended.)
Houk was an impressive guy. He was smart, he was a war hero, the writers liked him, and the owners liked him. Combining that with Casey’s age (in an era free of age discrimination suits), and with what some saw as “blowing the World Series” by not starting Ford in Game One, it all added up.
On November 2, Weiss, the team’s last link to the Ruppert-Barrow years, bowed out as general manager at a press conference. “I wasn’t fired. I am still here. I am under contract for the next five years as a consultant. I feel fine.” Roy Hamey was promoted to fill his position the next day.
Casey flew to Los Angeles, where he was met at International Airport by a helicopter, which flew him to Glendale. He had tears in his eyes when he stepped out of the helicopter and into a parade through downtown Glendale, followed by a reception at Stengel Field, and a gathering at the Verdugo Club. When he got home, a children’s neighborhood band, which had been welcoming him home since 1949, awaited. Some of the singers were now adults, but they returned for this quaint ritual one more time.
Another testimonial by the Los Angeles Baseball Writers’ Association chapter was held at the historic Biltmore Hotel on November 22. “Right now,” said Casey, “Edna should be able to get a job as a secretary for some ball club. She has a good system answering those letters, too. Any letters that mention jobs or money get a quick answer. Any which say I shoulda started Ford in the seventh game of the World Series, she puts aside for the time being.”
To a whole generation of new baseball fans—the baby boomers’ generation, born in the years following World War II—this was a shock to the system. Many had become Yankee fans because of Mickey Mantle, or because they liked winners, but Casey was the father figure, the guy who would somehow figure things out. He was the only manager they ever knew. This was like the loss of La Guardia as mayor of New York, or Roosevelt as president, or Joe Louis as heavyweight champion. Some things seemed like they would always be there. This one was not.
There was no need to weep for Casey’s lot in life. On December 14, it was announced that The Saturday Evening Post would be paying him $150,000 to write his life story. His old traveling secretary, Frank Scott, now a prominent player agent, negotiated the deal. Casey later said Life had offered thirty thousand more, but he didn’t want to create a bidding contest out of it.