The move to the newly named Shea Stadium made Casey the only man to have “worked” in five New York ballparks—Washington Park, Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium, and now Shea.
The modern conveniences made it a jewel among ballparks, and it opened to wonderful reviews, save for the sound of jets taking off and landing at nearby LaGuardia Airport. Casey knew all the particulars. At a winter sports dinner, when someone asked him about Shea, he said, “It has 57 bathrooms, and I need one now.”
By the time Shea closed in 2008, as the third-oldest park in the league, its new shine had faded and it was hardly beloved. But the excitement in its opening year was high, especially since it was parked next to the thrilling World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow, which Casey suggested would be helped more by the presence of the Mets than vice versa. (Casey went several times, and loved the “It’s a Small World” ride.)
To the fans, he reported, “Yes sir, the most tremendous stadium in the world. There are 29 escalators. No more heart attacks walking to your seat. You sit down and watch the game with air conditioning and with leather-backed seats. If you don’t like what’s going on, you can take a nap. Or you can go see the World’s Fair.”
The new ballpark, factored in with the continued promotion by Casey (and certainly not for an improving team), helped the Mets outdraw the Yankees by more than four hundred thousand in 1964.
The Yankees, meanwhile, hired Yogi Berra to succeed Houk as manager, Houk having been named general manager. Managers as far back as Al Lopez had played for Casey, but Yogi was one who had spent the bulk of his playing career under Stengel. The two understood each other, and had real warmth for each other, even if they could both be challenged when it came to showing emotion. Casey was genuinely proud to see his reliable old catcher elevated, though many questioned whether Berra, a former teammate of the players he would now manage, would succeed.
Just after the new year, Bob Lipsyte of The New York Times initiated a three-way call between Stengel, in Glendale, Berra, in Montclair, New Jersey, and himself. It was a chance for fans to eavesdrop on the two legends in casual conversation, talking about Edna, talking about Carmen, talking about Yogi’s boys, and talking a little pre–spring training baseball. The baseball talk was really “inside baseball,” a treat for readers who were overhearing a genuine conversation between these two now legendary figures.
Yogi thought that Choo Choo Coleman pulled the ball too much, and Casey agreed, saying that he had killed two spectators the previous year (an obvious exaggeration), but noting that Yogi used to hit a lot of balls foul too. Yogi thought maybe Coleman needed a heavier bat.
“I never go to sleep when I’m sittin’ on the bench,” said Casey. “He’ll pull it clear into our bench.”
The story occupied six columns on the front page of the Sunday sports section.
It was a clever idea by Lipsyte, and there was no indication that the two baseball legends were “playing for the camera.” This was a rare insight into a genuine conversation between these two legends, old friends and colleagues, famous for their use of the English language; something readers could never imagine eavesdropping on.
The Mets decided to re-create Casey’s early-spring instructional school before spring training opened, with Casey, of course, leading it. It opened on February 7, in St. Petersburg, and the students included Bud Harrelson, Cleon Jones, and Ron Swoboda, three players who would ultimately see action in a World Series for the Mets. This was the first time Casey would have his fingerprints on the origins of a championship team, aside from Kranepool, whom he had tutored since the first year. Swoboda, all of nineteen, really impressed him—plus, he liked saying his name, “Saboda.” He wanted Swoboda to go north with the team, but others overruled him, and it would be another year before the slugger from Baltimore made the club, and belted nineteen home runs in his rookie season.
Just before leaving for camp, Casey went to New York for the Baseball Writers’ Dinner, where he entertained the audience with tales of his 1949–53 champions, and then the Long Island Mets Boosters gathering at the Garden City Hotel.
“He was exhausted,” recalled Matt Winick, the team’s assistant PR director. “But he was a good soldier and understood the importance of being with the Long Island fans. He was supposed to speak for ten minutes and wrap up at 10 p.m. So he stood up at 9:50, walked to the lectern, spoke continuously in one sentence without pausing for a punctuation mark, had everyone laughing at the Stengelese, and then, without a peek at his watch or a clock on the wall, concluded—in mid-sentence—at exactly 10:00. Not 9:59. It was a masterful performance.”
“This year we’re going to have a new scoreboard costing a million and a half dollars and our television will be in color,” Casey told the gathering. “You can build a building in any city for $1.5 million. To make the scoreboard worthwhile and to look good in color, I’m sure the boys will rise to the occasion and score more.”
Winick loved watching Casey in action. “It was an unwritten rule: never leave him alone in the hotel bar,” he said. “He needed someone to talk to, someone who might look after him should he drink too much. In St. Louis, the handsome singer Robert Goulet was entertaining in our hotel. He greeted Casey during his performance. Casey said, ‘I’m like this here fellow,’ pointing to Goulet. ‘I have effeminate appeal.’ ”
Winick also marveled at Casey’s mastery of the press. “He knew everything about their jobs. He kept up on who the writers were. He was doing interviews in the front of a plane one day, and Leonard Shecter came up, notebook in hand, to join in. Casey said, ‘I’m taking care of the morning guys now; I’ll give different stuff later for your afternoon paper.’ ”
During spring training, the Mets made a weekend trip to Mexico City, where huge crowds came to their games, and no one was cheered more loudly than Casey.
When the Mets went to Fort Lauderdale to play the Yankees, Casey took the cap off Yogi’s head and said, “Gee, no Beatle haircut, someone told me you had one.”
Shea Stadium had its formal dedication on April 16, and Casey delivered the “benediction.” The move to Shea did not change Casey’s living habits—he retained his suite at the Essex House—but Edna fretted. “It’s a $6 cab ride now,” she told him. “Maybe you should take the subway.”
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Casey continued to cab it.
(His annual cost for staying at the Essex House, out of his own pocket, was about forty-five hundred dollars.)
This time, the Mets’ opening-week losing streak was only four, but they quickly fell to 1-8, and were in last place on April 29, doomed to spend another season there.
On May 4, a Monday-night game in Milwaukee, the Mets got into a fight with the Braves, and Casey, at seventy-three, got into the action. The old fight was still in him. He grabbed Denis Menke, the Braves’ shortstop, from behind, and Menke, trying to shrug his shoulders and remove the body, dumped Casey onto the ground.
“The first body I stepped over was Casey’s,” said Tracy Stallard. “Oh my God.”
“I didn’t know whether to offer him a hand or just laugh,” said Menke.
On May 10, the Mets farmed out Kranepool to Buffalo, and signed Tom Sturdivant, who had been a reliable starter for Casey in the mid-1950s with the Yankees. He made 16 appearances. The Mets would sign almost anyone with a pulse at this point. Frank Lary, thirty-four, the old Yankee-killer from the Detroit Tigers, got a contract and made eight starts.
They certainly needed bodies on May 31, when the Mets played a Sunday doubleheader with the Giants that began 1:08 p.m. and ended at 11:25 p.m. The Giants won both games, the second one lasting twenty-three innings and taking seven hours and twenty-three minutes. There were 57,037 at Shea that day, although most had departed by the time the evening came to a close. Casey (or his coaches) used twenty-one players in the second game, with a number of them—Roy McMillan, Thomas, Christopher, Kranepool (already back from the minors), Hickman, Charley Smith, and poor Cannizzaro getting ten plate appearances apiece. (McMillan, Christopher, Kranepool, and Smith also played the complete first game.)
It was just like old times for Casey: he’d actually managed a twenty-three-inning tie game in 1939 with the Bees.
On June 21—Father’s Day—the Phillies’ Jim Bunning made baseball history, hurling a perfect game against the Mets, the first one thrown in the National League in the twentieth century. It was only the thirty-first home game the Mets had played at Shea Stadium. Casey was right about the amazin’ things fans might see there.
Bill Wakefield was an effective reliever for Stengel in 1964, pitching in sixty-two games with a 3.61 ERA. It was his only big-league season, but he made a lot of friends among the writers and was an insightful observer of Casey Stengel in action.
“Jerry Hinsley was with us,” he said, “and he told Casey that his parents were coming to Los Angeles from New Mexico on May 20. Casey said, ‘Okay, you’re gonna pitch,’ and he did, true to his word. A clubhouse meeting wouldn’t include criticism of anyone, but he might tell a long story and look around the room, and everyone thought he was talking about them. He was always ‘on.’ ‘You know, guys,’ he’d say, ‘this isn’t a honeymoon trip, we’re not here to entertain girlfriends, we’re here to win some ballgames.’ He liked to be a little vague, to get your mind going, get you thinking.”
When Old-Timers Day came around, Casey was in his glory. He knew everyone, and, with a few drinks, could regale the guests with endless stories. At the dinner at Toots Shor’s, he spoke for sixty-seven minutes, paused to drink some water, then went on for another twenty-eight. At least, that is what Leonard Lyons reported in the New York Post.
In mid-August, when Casey and Edna were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary, the Mets had a bit of a hot streak, winning nine out of eleven. Though they were buried deep in last place and only picked up two games in the standings during the streak, this was new ground for them—they were not used to good streaks at all—and there was the predictable talk about their “turning a corner.” But it was not to be. They returned to their losing ways, lost eleven of twelve in late September, and wound up only two games better than the year before.
Even some of Casey’s more supportive writers began to question when the Mets might “move to the next step,” which implied getting a manager who was more about winning games and less about winning fans. Casey had, they felt, fulfilled his purpose—drawn attention to the franchise, put them ahead of the Yankees in attendance, opened the new stadium, and charmed the media. But maybe it was time to move on. They certainly didn’t want ever to have to fire him and earn the bad will the Yankees had reaped when he departed.
Critics were heard from, and not just Cosell. Jackie Robinson, still no fan of Casey’s, said he was “too critical of his players and falls asleep on the bench.” Two of his departing players, Piersall and Tim Harkness, also accused him of sleeping on the bench. Snider had left bitterly at the end of spring training, sold to the Giants for thirty thousand dollars. He had no desire to play for a last-place club; at the very least, he wanted more money to serve as a player/coach.
“Maybe he’ll be more content on the coast and will help that club,” said Casey. “But for us you’ve got to ask: How many games can he play? Can you cut young pitchers to make room for him when he’d rather be nearer home, and then maybe he plays only part-time? What we need are young fellows who can play maybe eight or nine years.”
The Mets called a press conference for September 29 at the New York Hilton, to announce that Casey had signed another one-year contract, to return for 1965. Weiss told the press that Casey’s authority to veto trades had been removed, and that the front office now took full responsibility for the roster. Meanwhile, Casey received what he called a “splendid raise.”
The “Ol’ Perfessor” was delighted to carry on.