Editorial writers and columnists, led by Dick Young, quickly encouraged Casey’s induction into the Hall of Fame. “At 75, a man shouldn’t have to wait five years,” wrote Young. On December 2, 1965, the Baseball Writers’ Association, feeling Casey merited special consideration, voted unanimously to “recommend to the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee that it act immediately and favorably on the candidacy of Casey Stengel as a member of the Hall of Fame.”
And there the story sat for three months.
It was almost time for Casey to go to St. Petersburg for spring training, in his new role as Mets vice president, generally described as “heading West Coast scouting.” Before leaving, Casey went to the Baseball Writers’ Dinners in both New York and Los Angeles, and presided over a press conference at the Essex House, intended simply to catch “my writers” up on what Casey was up to.
On March 8, 1966, on the pretense of being needed to present a plaque to George Weiss, Casey and Edna were driven to St. Petersburg’s Huggins-Stengel Field.
There, former Commissioner Ford Frick, head of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee, spoke to the assembled press and club officials. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m supposed to be through with baseball, but as chairman of the old-timers committee I have a very happy honor. I’m pleased to tell you that Mr. Charles Dillon Stengel has been elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.”
He was the 104th inductee into the Hall, and he had probably played with or against or managed more of the other 103 than had anyone else.
Casey, in a brown suit and gold necktie, dropped his cane and seemed genuinely caught by surprise. He had suspected there was more to the day than a plaque for Weiss, but thought it might be a big trade announcement by the Mets—maybe even getting Willie Mays. The Mets were always trying to do that.
He moved next to Frick, and the new commissioner, Spike Eckert. Beginning to tear up, he said:
Thank you, I appreciate it. I guess I should say a thousand thank yous.
This is amazin’ to me because there are so many guys who I think belong there ahead of me who are not in there yet. I go in with that other great man, Ted Williams, next July 25 at Cooperstown. I will save my acceptance speech if Ted Williams will be kind enough to allow me five minutes when I am inducted at Cooperstown.
I want to thank everyone, especially the baseball writers, who I feel are responsible for my election while I still can enjoy it. I guess there are a thousand other things I ought to say so I just want to say thank you to everyone.
“Casey, is this the greatest moment of your life?” shouted a reporter.
“Well now, I’ve lived a long time,” he answered with a wink.
Edna kissed him, and then kissed him again at the photographers’ request.
The vote was unanimous, and Casey became the fifth man for whom the five-year waiting period was waived, the others being Connie Mack, Lou Gehrig, Judge Landis, and Joe DiMaggio, who was elected in his fourth year of retirement, although he had fallen short the previous year. (In voting based strictly on his playing career, Casey received a smattering of votes in nine different elections, with a high of sixty-one in his final year of consideration, 1953. His managerial success was surely a factor in that total, given that his vote total between 1938 and 1951 never reached double figures.)
At a breakfast in St. Pete a few days later, a telegram from President Lyndon Johnson was read: “It is most fitting that Stengel should be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, as he already is enshrined in the hearts of millions of his countrymen.”
On April 19, Casey was back home to help the Angels dedicate the hundred-million-dollar Anaheim Stadium, where he threw out the first pitch. Casey had been Gene Autry’s first choice to manage the Angels, and Del Webb Construction had built the park, so there were close ties. The park was thirty-five miles south of Glendale.
Bobby Case, now twenty, had been a visiting-clubhouse attendant for the Angels while they shared Dodger Stadium with the Dodgers. In the mid-1950s, he had been a batboy for the Brooklyn Dodgers Rookies, who trained at Stengel Field in Glendale. (Yes, Brooklyn did already have a presence in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s.) Casey got to know Bobby then. Now Bobby was offered a job to move with the Angels down the I-5 to their new location, where he could commute and continue to work in their clubhouse.
“Why would you want to do that?” asked Casey, as the two met in Casey’s den. “Come work for me.”
“It was the greatest break of my life,” says Case. “He became my mentor, my tutor, my father, and I would serve him as ‘business manager,’ taking care of whatever needed care.”
Case worked for Casey for the rest of Casey’s life.
On April 27, the Stengels left for a two-week trip to Hawaii, courtesy of Mutual of Omaha, for whom Casey was doing advertising and promotion. There are a lot of Mutual of Omaha signed Stengel baseballs in American homes, created for his personal appearances.
Edna did all the planning, as usual. She also wrote all the household checks, cashed one when Casey needed money, and reminded him to deposit checks that had been sitting around for months. She oversaw the upkeep on their fourteen-room house, the swimming pool, the tennis court, and the sunhouse, plus the formal gardens and the orchard with fruit-bearing trees. He was still a director of her family’s bank and had an office there; interestingly, she was not. She or Bobby Case answered his fan mail.
After his Hall of Fame induction, many of the requests for autographs were Hall-issued plaque postcards, which he would sign in his large handwriting. “The surface of the postal cards is too slick to write on with a ball-point pen,” he observed. “But did you know that if you take some cigarette ash and rub it on, you can then write on it okay? But cigarette butts are hard to find these days, so I’ve got this felt-tip pen that doesn’t smudge and works fine.”
Casey’s duties as a West Coast scout had him watching and talking with Steve Chilcott, a seventeen-year-old catcher who had been Player of the Year in his seven-team league while at Antelope Valley High School. In this, the second year of the amateur draft (then called the “free agent draft”), the Mets had the very first pick in the nation, having finished last in 1965.
“One look is enough for me,” said Casey. “This boy has all the tools to become a major league hitter.” The Mets selected Chilcott.
The Kansas City Athletics, picking second, chose Reggie Jackson. Chilcott never played a major-league game. In fairness, Casey was never sent to scout Jackson in Arizona.
Ted Williams and Stengel were named honorary coaches of the All-Star teams for the July 12 game in St. Louis. Wearing his Mets uniform, Casey remarked that the newly built Busch Memorial Stadium “holds the heat real well.” It was 105 degrees at game time, probably even hotter on the field. Casey managed to reinjure his leg at the game—not seriously, but enough so he required special assistance to depart.
Before they headed to Cooperstown, a party was held at Stengel Field in Glendale. Casey’s onetime infielder Jerry Coleman, now a Yankee broadcaster, was master of ceremonies, and Casey was given a home plate from Shea Stadium autographed by more than a hundred New York writers, broadcasters, photographers, and baseball people during the recent Mayor’s Trophy Game.
About ten thousand people filled Cooper Park in Cooperstown for the July 25 induction ceremony. It was the largest gathering since the Hall’s 1939 dedication ceremonies, fueled largely by Ted Williams’s popularity with New England fans and Casey’s with New York fans, both markets being within driving distance. Only four Hall of Famers were there—Bill Terry, Bill Dickey, Joe McCarthy, and Joe Cronin, who was then president of the American League. These were the days before the Hall of Famers themselves—led largely by Tom Seaver and Johnny Bench—began actively rounding up as many living members as they could and turning the weekend into a much larger event.
Bob Fishel represented the Yankees, present to receive a trophy for their winning the Hall of Fame game the year before. No Topping, no Webb—they had sold 80 percent of the team to CBS a year and a half before. That would be considered a disappointing turnout from the team that made him a Hall of Famer. Still, Fishel was the logical representative, someone who had worked closely with Casey. And they really liked each other.
George Weiss and Johnny Murphy were there from the Mets’ front office. Weiss, Stan Musial, Warren Giles, and Tom Yawkey were future Hall of Famers in the crowd. (If one includes players in the annual Hall of Fame game which followed, the list grows, to include Red Schoendienst, Lou Brock, Orlando Cepeda, Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson, and Harmon Killebrew.)
Commissioner Eckert, in his first visit to Cooperstown, introduced Williams first, and Ted made news by saying, “I hope some day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson can be added here in some way as a symbol of great Negro players. They are not here only because they didn’t get a chance.” Then he said, “I’ll lose a good friend if I don’t stop talking. I’m eating into his time and Casey Stengel will never forgive me.”
The Hall of Fame secretary, Ed Stack, fondly remembered that Williams was very protective of Stengel and looked after him all weekend.
The sunny afternoon—baseball weather for sure—was perfect. Up hobbled seventy-six-year-old Casey Stengel, in a dark suit and light tie against a white dress shirt, his credential ribbon pinned to his right lapel. This was his moment. It would be the highest honor afforded him in the game to which he had given years of his life. It had been exactly a year since his career-ending fall.
He had written and rehearsed a speech, but completely ignored it when his time came. Instead, he thanked a number of people, including Edna, and thanked the two league presidents for “not taking more of my money when I was obnoxious and they respected my age.” He mentioned Bill Terry, Joe McCarthy, and John McGraw for teaching him “the art of managing”; Terry was an odd choice, but, after all, he was present; Casey was being kind.
He spoke in his rapid style for twenty minutes, starting, appropriately, at the beginning, and saying in part:
I played my first year and was transferred to Kentucky, and that was fine with me, because I knew that’s where they kept the gold in this country.
I worked for Mr. Ebbets and got $2100 a year and lived at 47th and Broadway.
Since I’ve been in baseball from the year 1910 to 1966, I want to thank everybody, including Worcester, Mass., which is the first team I managed and where I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. George Weiss who had the New Haven club, because whenever I was discharged, Mr. Weiss found it out and would reemploy me.
When I first played the game, they couldn’t play on the Sabbath because that was the preachers’ day to collect. I still remember my first game against Babe Ruth and that day he hit two over my head and then I knew who Babe Ruth was. I moved back after the first one and yelled to Hi Myers, “Is this far enough?” And he answered yes, and Ruth hit another one over my head.
I’m thankful I had baseball knuckles and couldn’t become a dentist.
The toughest competition we ever had when I was managing the Yankees was from the Boston Red Sox. Between my English and the Bostonese English, we had a little difficulty understanding each other.
Now I don’t want to take any more of your time or the game may not start. And keep going to see the Mets.
His plaque showed him in a Yankees uniform, looking quite serious. For someone famous for funny faces when he posed—winking an eye, playfully teasing the photographer—it didn’t tell the real story. But the likeness was good. It said:
CHARLES DILLON STENGEL
“CASEY”
MANAGED NEW YORK YANKEES 1949–1960.
WON 10 PENNANTS AND 7 WORLD SERIES WITH
NEW YORK YANKEES. ONLY MANAGER TO WIN
5 CONSECUTIVE WORLD SERIES 1949–1953.
PLAYED OUTFIELD 1912–1925 WITH BROOKLYN,
PITTSBURGH, PHILADELPHIA, NEW YORK AND
BOSTON N.L. TEAMS. MANAGED BROOKLYN
1934–1936, BOSTON BRAVES 1938–1943,
NEW YORK METS 1962–1965.
It was true: the five-year-old, hapless New York Mets were on a Hall of Fame plaque.
Then it was off to watch the Hall of Fame game at Doubleday Field, followed by a retreat for cocktails to the back porch of the stately Otesaga Hotel overlooking Lake Otsego, and the conclusion of a splendid day in Casey Stengel’s life.
After the Hall of Fame ceremony, Casey went back to Shea for Old-Timers’ Day, suiting up again in his Mets uniform for a day whose theme was the 1950 All-Star Game, in which he managed the American League. When he was presented with his usual late-July birthday cake, and said, “Since I was in the Hall of Fame I think that the players that were introduced here were possibly the greatest ones of all time. I have one more message for the wonderful fans who have paid their way into this here stadium. You got a manager here who is doing an accomplished job. There are three or four or eight or nine players who will go into the Mets Hall of Fame.”
There probably weren’t. And there wasn’t yet a Mets Hall of Fame, but when they created one in 1981, Casey and Joan Payson were the first people selected.