With the excitement of his Hall of Fame year behind him, Casey’s life settled into a post-baseball routine that would last for his remaining years.
The beautiful home on Grandview would become sort of a post–White House retreat such as presidents enjoyed. Rod Dedeaux and Babe Herman were his closest baseball neighbors, living just a block away and dropping in often. But so, too, would other old friends, perhaps paying their respects to this grand old man.
Oh, there might be a younger visitor now and then. Rod Kanehl was known to stop by, drunk, at, say, two in the morning. And sometimes that was all right: Casey welcomed him, until Rod went overboard, teasing him at an Old-Timers’ Day by calling him a geezer and saying his old man made money watering down whiskey in Kansas City; at that point, Casey cut off the friendship. This recalls Casey’s elevator meeting with Mickey McDermott in the mid-1950s; supposedly, when the door opened, Casey saw his inebriated pitcher and said, “Drunk again?,” to which McDermott allegedly replied, “Me, too.”
An evening cocktail with a smoke was de rigueur at the Stengels’. Crown Royal was his favorite, either straight or with a little Coca-Cola. Edna did not smoke, but she would join him for the drink.
When people gathered to talk about Casey, his drinking prowess would take on near-legendary tones. Some of it was exaggerated in the storytelling, but this was still a time when the ability to hold one’s whiskey was thought to be a manly act, even admirable. It was true—Casey seldom appeared drunk, and seemed to be just as fine after six or seven drinks as after one. (On at least one occasion, however, the Mets players Roger Craig and Norm Sherry found him passed out in the hallway of the team hotel. They got a night manager to help put him in his bed.) The capacity was spoken of in awe.
“We were never much at drinking,” confided Edna, perhaps naïvely. “But we did like to sit around at the end of a day with a double shot of rum and sweet lime drink.”
Their home was quite welcoming to visitors. His phone number was listed: 241-4041. On Halloween, the doorbell never stopped ringing—he gave out dollar bills and candy. Kids who wanted autographs might get “I’m gonna send a Mets scout to see you,” or “You’re gonna be a Met someday.” Even adults, if they were touring the neighborhood and aware of his address, might ring the bell. He’d invite them in and show off his den with all his bats and balls and trophies, even the den’s “secret door,” which opened to reveal more treasures. And the school bell and bricks from his elementary school, presented at long-ago celebrations.
The parents of Darrell Evans, the Atlanta Braves slugger, showed up one day, and Casey entertained them for eight hours. He might stuff four or five kids from the neighborhood into his car and take everyone to the El-Vaq for ice cream, which was across the street from Stengel Field.
In October 1970, when The New York Times had just initiated an op-ed page, with guest columns, they asked Casey if he wanted to write one. It was called “They’ve All Got Automobiles,” and went on about players with long hair being fine as long as they followed club rules, and about how the high salaries in the game allowed players the independence to own cars and drive wherever they want. It was in pure Stengelese, as the Times editors had probably hoped it would be, and woe to anyone who tried to edit it.
He was a good correspondent. He wrote letters and postcards to people of all ranks, in and out of baseball. Dutch Zwilling was his closest friend among old players—Casey had actually once dated Zwilling’s future wife—with Babe Herman a close second. Other visitors over the years included Chief Meyers, Wilbur Cooper, Johnny Rawlings, Del Webb, High Pockets Kelly, and Charlie Deal, who had played for the “Miracle Braves” of 1914. There were regular calls from Al Lopez, Rosy Ryan, Max Carey, and many others. Seldom did he call his Yankee players, such as Mantle, Ford, and Berra, the ones most identified with his era. Of the three, Berra, the oldest, his “assistant manager,” was the most likely to keep in contact.
Of course, Casey would reunite with them at many of the Old-Timers’ Days that he attended at parks other than Yankee Stadium. A few years after his retirement, a uniform and a cap were made for him for such appearances, bearing the logos of all of his major-league teams—as a player and as a manager. It was fun, and he would return the fun by making grand entrances, taking deep bows, or hiking his trousers and dancing a little jig out of the dugout. Eventually, he was able to abandon his cane.
Edna, who still enjoyed designer clothes, both cut his hair and dyed it. They liked to sit in the original Polo Grounds seats, next to the swimming pool, but Casey seldom ventured to New York, even to get out of the summer heat of southern California. Sometimes he would pick avocados from the orchard behind the Stengels’ fenced-in tennis court and give a bunch to Bobby Case to take home.
Classical music could be heard on the old phonograph in the house. There were reproductions of Norman Rockwell’s baseball paintings, which Casey loved. He would not watch much TV, but he would watch Walter Cronkite deliver the news at seven, and through the night his radio could be heard upstairs, in the bedroom, as he listened to the early days of talk radio, and shouted at it, “Ahhh, you’re full of shit and I’ll tell you why.” This was another of his favorite expressions.
He liked Richard Nixon, who named him the greatest manager of the 1925–70 era in 1972, when Nixon was developing lists with the help of his son-in-law David Eisenhower. “Well, for heaven’s sake, I’m very glad,” Casey said. “And he picked it himself, you say? Well, it’s very nice the President is so well versed in sports with so many things he has to do in his sojourn as President.”
But Casey also liked the Kennedys, and Edna displayed a signed picture from Robert Kennedy that said, “From one of the many Kennedy fans of the Stengels.”
He liked hippies, and he defended long hair. He would watch the evolving culture on TV reports and find them interesting. He seemed to know that there was a growing movement in there somewhere, and he embraced it. He always liked hell raisers more than goody-two-shoes people, and even though the hippies were hardly hell raisers, he appreciated their nonconformity.
Casey watched a lot of baseball and was quick to spot everything wrong. “Goddam it, you put your left foot first,” he’d shout. And he’d laugh about Marv Throneberry and the early Mets when he’d see a play that reminded him of them. He was clearly a Mets fan, and was still bitter about the Yankees, despite wearing Yankee underwear—it was just more comfortable.
He became a fan of USC sports, partly because of his friendship with their coach, Rod Dedeaux, and partly because Tom Seaver, the star of the Mets, had played for Dedeaux.
He was good at keeping doctor’s appointments—Dedeaux would select the doctors—but he remained in excellent health. The occasional flu bug would come and go, but for an old man, he was in excellent shape. He took no medications.
“Casey would love to go out with my dad,” said Justin Dedeaux, Rod’s son—especially if some members of Edna’s family were visiting. “And they both loved sports themed restaurants—Paul’s Duck Press, the House of Murphy. He was happy to get out. Dad, of course, didn’t like the way Casey drove, so he’d always pick him up.”
He took care of old players, writing checks if they needed money, without any expectation of being repaid—three hundred, five hundred dollars, whatever came into his head. It caused him anguish to see that Ernie Lombardi was washing windshields at a service station during the 1973 World Series in Oakland, which Casey attended because the Mets were playing. He paid the funeral expenses for as many as ten former players with whom he’d had friendships. He sent money home to his sister, Louise, regularly, as he had long done for their mother.
“It was funny,” recalls Bob Case. “He was so generous. He would pick up a dinner tab for eight people like it was nothing. But the next day might have me phone eight places to get the best price on a car battery. If we found one where he saved ten dollars, he was happy.”
Sometimes he would attend church. His bank secretary, Margaret Mollett, was Catholic, and he liked and admired nuns, and the traditions and order of the church teachings, although he respected all religions. “I was with him almost daily all those years,” says Bob Case. “Even in the privacy of his home, you’d never hear him cut down a race or a religion. He respected everyone.”
He loved baseball people, of course, and the community of baseball people extended a wide net. Fans who seemed to have nothing else in their lives but collecting autographs at airports—well, they were part of the community. They loved the game just as he did. He never put them down. And if someone sent a request for an autograph without a self-addressed stamped envelope for its return, Casey would reach into his desk and get his own envelope and his own stamp and ready it for mailing.
He respected every player who had made it into The Baseball Encyclopedia. “If your name’s in there,” he’d say, “you were a great player.”
He drove his big dented black 1960 Cadillac into his eighties—dangerously, on occasion. “He drove like he talked,” recalled his Mets publicist Matt Winick.
On December 11, 1968, he suffered minor injuries in a traffic accident in Glendale, when his Cadillac collided with a car driven by a twenty-seven-year-old woman. He spent three days in the hospital, treated for cuts and bruises, and was fined $302 for drunken driving and charged with leaving the scene of an accident. The charge was dismissed, however. Eventually, they took away his license, but before DUI was taken seriously, the Glendale police would give him an escort home if he was wavering from lane to lane.
Casey liked big steaks and he liked a lot of butter on his rolls, and he would snack on cookies, pretzels, and potato chips. Sometimes he would go to the Oakmont Country Club for a big breakfast, or the Robin Hood Inn. He loved going to Winchell’s Donuts for a sweet treat. If he was recognized, that was all the better. He loved holding court and enchanting his audience with humor. He didn’t suffer fools—he could walk into a room and immediately separate the phonies from the real people. And he never “big leagued” anyone, never acted superior.
Trips to Stengel Field to see whoever was playing were a welcome break. Even a sloppy youth-league game could hold his attention; he’d sit there signing autographs and remarking on how “splendid” the pitcher looked.
Casey kept old baseball gloves in his car. “Sometimes he’d just feel like pulling over and having a catch,” said Case. “Even in his seventies, he could keep a catch going for an hour. He had these old left-handed gloves with no strings through the fingers. I don’t know if they were from his playing days, but they were old.”
Case also remembered, “And he’d spell things out. If he was talking about some old Brooklyn teammate and he knew I’d never heard of him, he’d say something like ‘Ragan! R-A-G-A-N!’ ” (Don Carlos Patrick Ragan, also from Missouri, was among the eleven teammates of Casey’s who played in Cuba in the 1913 post-season series.) Meanwhile, Case drove him around or did whatever nonhousekeeping chores needed attention. “Be at Stengel Field at four,” Casey might tell him on the phone, without bothering to say hello.
Case didn’t mind at all. He reported for work each day, thrilled to be in the old man’s company.
Each December, the Stengels always had a Christmas tree, and sometimes Casey would don a Santa hat to greet people at the door. Edna did the Christmas cards, including a card for everyone who sent one, even fans.
He was still in demand for advertisers. For instance, RCA ran ads for its new color TVs showing Casey and Edna posing in front of one in their Glendale den.
Clarice Lennon was his housekeeper in the first years of his retirement. About five or six months before Casey’s death, a woman named June Bowlin took charge of the house. She had begun communicating with Casey from her home in Kentucky, and sent him scrapbooks she had kept on him. That was the way to get into Casey’s good graces; he loved fans like that. He hired her after a fuss was made over the disrepair the house was falling into. He was reluctant to acknowledge Edna’s inability to take care of the house any longer. June was hired when Casey learned she had taken care of Jesse Haines, a Hall of Fame pitcher with the Cardinals. June Bowlin was a take-charge presence. When Edna’s niece Lynn Rossi inquired as to how Casey was doing, June finished her reply with “Thank you for your interest,” as though she had become the ultimate gatekeeper.
At Casey’s age, death came often to people whom he loved. “There was an obit a week, for sure,” says Case. “But I only saw him cry three times over news of a passing—George Weiss in 1972, Frankie Frisch in 1973, and Edna’s niece Margaret Mollett, his bank secretary, in 1975. She was the one in the Lawson family he liked the most, trusted the most. She and Mae Hunter, Edna’s sister.” As for the rest of the Lawsons, Casey called them “my relations” in a somewhat negative way. He began stashing away cash at his home rather than the bank.
Casey’s Old-Timers’ Day routine centered on the Mets, and they usually held theirs around the time of his birthday. So a trip to New York with Edna for a birthday and the old-timers gathering always marked the center of the summer, as did a trip to Cooperstown for the annual induction ceremony. And there was still spring training every year in St. Petersburg, and the annual Baseball Writers’ Association Dinner in New York. He would occasionally take the stage at the writers’ dinner to perform a little song written for him.
Those were the “givens.”
The 1967 Mets Old-Timers’ Day featured his 1960 Yankees and his 1962 Mets—quite a contrast between good and bad—and he had a ball mingling with both. There were Throneberry, Kanehl, Neal, Chacon, Hook, Zimmer, Mizell, Moford, Ashburn, Chiti, and Coleman, along with Richardson, McDougald, Shantz, Turley, Duren, Lopat, Berra, and Ford, who had just retired. Ruffing, Henrich, and DiMaggio were also there. He still got a great kick out of that first Mets team, despite their 40-120 record. He knew there was something special, something historic about them. As for the ’60 Yankees, they represented his last pennant winner, but also the team that “got me fired” after they lost the World Series.
He went to the All-Star Game in Anaheim that year, the one that lasted fifteen innings, and celebrated his birthday at Dodger Stadium. Maury Allen, seeing him without his cane, said, “Casey, you said you couldn’t manage so long as you couldn’t go to the mound without a cane to remove a pitcher. Any chance of a comeback?” He laughed. But he probably thought he could do it.
Joe Durso’s biography of Casey came out in 1967, a book that was most noteworthy for a long and loving portrayal of Edna as a woman of great warmth and a lot of class. Casey liked the book because of that section, even if it exposed an occasional tiff between them that was visible to Durso and the traveling party. If Edna caused a team bus or team flight to be delayed, Casey could silently fume. Like most marriages, it was not without complications.
Gil Hodges became manager of the Mets in 1968, and Casey was there in St. Petersburg, talking to everyone about what a splendid manager he would be. Among his Old-Timers’ Days in 1968 was one in Oakland, where his champion 1948 Oaks regrouped to play an abbreviated game against the ’48 San Francisco Seals. Billy Martin, now managing Denver at the start of his managing career, played second for the Oaks. All three baseball-playing DiMaggio brothers were there that day to play in the same outfield.
Casey always thought Joe DiMaggio lived with a sense of “entitlement,” but the two never said publicly anything negative about each other, and greeted each other warmly at Old-Timers’ Days or in Cooperstown. DiMaggio had to accept that the man who was once a “clown” had become a legend himself, and as famous as he was.
Privately, when reminded how angry DiMaggio was about playing first base one day, Casey would just say, “I’m managing the team.” He could discuss the old days, but he never lost sight of who was boss.
On January 10, 1969, he had surgery for a perforated peptic ulcer at Glendale Memorial Hospital. The surgery was performed the very day he complained of pain, and his recovery was relatively swift. He was able to go to the Mets training camp as usual, but he didn’t speak at the annual dinner in Bradenton, which featured sixteen Hall of Famers. For Casey, choosing not to speak was a story in itself.
There were twenty-three Hall of Famers at the Mets’ Old-Timers’ Day in June, and then, in July, came baseball’s gala centennial celebration in Washington, with events built around the All-Star Game. (It was the centennial of professional baseball, as defined by the birth of the Cincinnati Red Stockings.) In a national poll, Casey was voted the game’s Greatest Living Manager (“I want to thank all my players for giving me the honor of being what I was,” he said). At a memorable White House reception line on the eve of the game, President Nixon asked Casey about his banking interests. As a baseball fan and as a Californian, Nixon knew all about Casey and his bank.
He kept on the move. A few weeks later, he went to an Old-Timers’ Game in St. Louis, where he danced a polka at the post-game party. No one knew he could polka.
By late August and early September, his Amazin’ Mets were still in the race for their first Eastern Division title, and people were beginning to pay attention to the job Hodges was doing.
“They’re not playing today with the green peas I had,” said Casey when he was asked to comment. “And they aren’t Snider and Hodges and other well-known men around New York that Mr. Weiss asked me to take in ’62 and ’63.”
It was one of the great moments in American sports when the Mets won it all in ’69. Casey threw out the first ball for Game Three of the World Series at Shea Stadium, and covered the whole series for the New York Daily News by dictating his thoughts after each game. Of the sensational catches made by Swoboda and Agee (two, in Agee’s case), moments that defined the miraculous nature of the triumph, Casey said, “Watch those catches. You’ll see how amazing those men are, and you say, ‘How can you teach it?’ Well, you look at how they do it and you can see they are one-handed, so don’t be afraid of calling it showboat and tell them to catch it two-handed—because you can catch it two-handed only you don’t catch it.”
In the commotion of the Mets’ clubhouse after the final game victory, Casey slipped into the crowd. He talked to anybody and everybody. “Now if I throw strikes, are you going to hit them? No. The center fielder, [Agee] he’s wonderful. We never had a center fielder. And what’s wrong with [Cleon] Jones? They’re like roommates. They run into each other, but they don’t knock each other down.
“But you’ll have to excuse me. I have to go to Europe. My newspapers over there are waiting. There is a good eight hours difference and I have to get my sleep. Goodbye, everybody.”
And off he went into the night, back to the familiarity of the Essex House, having lived long enough to see a world championship won by his Mets. There was no European trip.
Fall turned to winter, and early in 1970, there was Casey, pondering the Yankees’ invitation to their Old-Timers’ Day, when they planned to retire his number. It was an invitation to end his exile and return to Yankee Stadium. Ownership had changed, and the people who had dismissed him were no longer running things.
All the years he had managed the Mets, it had been unthinkable: he wouldn’t leave his team for this. From 1966 to 1969, he could have attended and chose not to, not even for Mantle Day in ’69.
But Casey appreciated the culture of the game, and knew that to have a number retired—as the Mets had done—was a very big deal. With the retirement of Mantle’s number 7 the year before, only four Yankee numbers had been retired: Ruth’s, Gehrig’s, DiMaggio’s, and Mantle’s. This was still a very elite society. Casey got it. He knew it was big. Edna encouraged him to go. And the invitation included that personal note from Bob Fishel. So he accepted.
A week after his eightieth birthday, the day arrived. The old-timer guests all stayed at the Americana on Seventh Avenue, but Casey and Edna got the okay to stay at the Essex House. A car would be sent for them at the appointed hour. The Yankees paid for Edna’s travel, too—a break from club policy for Old-Timers’ Days.
In anticipation of the day, a poster was made for all fans in attendance, announcing the appearance of Casey Stengel’s All-Time Yankee Team, and before the ceremonies, all the players on the poster (except Crosetti and Kubek, who were not present) signed the poster. Casey went last, affixing his large signature over his photo at the top.
He would share Ralph Houk’s office—the one that used to be his. He’d always liked Houk; he never considered him part of some conspiracy to oust him in 1960. Ralph insisted he sit in the large, comfortable plush desk chair. Casey changed into his Yankee uniform in there—the first time he had worn one since Mazeroski’s home run a decade before.
He had never agreed to the team’s holding a Casey Stengel Day during his twelve seasons as manager. This would, in essence, be it.
He was the last guest introduced, and he did a little jig on his way onto the field. Fishel motioned for Ford and Berra to come forward, with a folded number 37 in hand. And the longtime “Voice of the Yankees,” Mel Allen, who, like Casey, had been harshly dismissed years before, announced that on this day the Yankees would retire Casey’s number. The crowd roared its approval.
Casey was clearly moved. Proudly holding it high, he said, “I want to thank these players and you fans for putting me in this uniform. Now that I’ve finally got one [a retired jersey], I think I’ll die in it.” Everyone cheered as the old man hobbled back to the Yankee dugout and carefully down the steps.
That night, at a private party at Toots Shor’s, he regaled everyone with stories, even remembering specific plays involving the old-time Yankees who were present. The players were like fans, eager to get a moment with Casey.
As was the style of the times, the women had dinner in a separate dining room, lest they hear the foul language that accompanied the men’s stories. At a certain hour late into the evening, the women were allowed to join the men, and Edna led the small group (Mrs. Ruth, Mrs. Gehrig, Mrs. Weiss, and a few others) into the “men’s dining room,” to the music of the Bunny Hop.
The Stengels departed the next day. About a week later, a postcard arrived at the stadium and was delivered to the PR office. It was simply addressed “New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY 10451.” On the back, in the familiar large handwriting, it said, “Mrs. Stengel and I had a marvelous time and it was nice to see old friends. Will send my expense receipts separately. And thank you for my prize. Casey Stengel.”
Ah, the prize. Each old-timer received a gift—an engraved clock radio, valued at about sixty dollars. To Casey, this was the “prize” he was referring to. It hardly merited a thank-you, but he had old-school grace and sent the postcard.
Retired numbers were not yet displayed at Yankee Stadium, other than in the reception area to the street-level Stadium Club restaurant. Casey’s 37 joined the other four in individual frames next to the elevator: Ruth 3, Gehrig 4, DiMaggio 5, Mantle 7, Stengel 37. Lofty company.
He displayed a framed 37 in his den. Eventually, as the number of honorees grew and as the display area extended in new and refurbished stadiums, there would be the 37 on the wall behind the bleachers, in Monument Park, and at the Yankees spring-training site in Tampa. It was easy to forget that number 37 was only the fifth that the team retired. In fact, at the time he retired as Mets manager, only twelve uniform numbers had been retired in all of baseball, including his.
Life may have been idyllic for the Stengels at their fabulous home in Glendale, but trouble was coming.
In 1971, Edna Stengel began to show forgetfulness and signs of what was then called senility. She was no longer handling her check-writing chores properly. The early stages of her oncoming Alzheimer’s disease were taking hold. She would continue to live at Grandview.
“Clarice Lennon told me he was up at the Brand Park Field near the house,” said Bob Case. “Edna had just been diagnosed. I found him in his big black Cadillac, watching a Little League game, but mostly staring into space. I asked what was wrong, and he said, ‘She’s batty.’ ”
Although his expressions seemed to make light of the situation, his heart was breaking. He cared for her as best he could, even giving her baths and dressing her. They continued to sleep in the same double bed in the upstairs master bedroom.
Eventually, it was time for this elegant woman to enter a care facility, the Glenoaks Convalescent Hospital on Glenoaks Boulevard, two miles away. Unless he was out of town, Casey would visit her every day; when his driver’s license was finally “retired,” he would walk. He’d bring flowers, or her favorite See’s candy. Though he would wheel her around, she was no longer able to recognize him.
Edna had always written all the household checks; now Casey had to do it himself. He could no longer sleep soundly at night; he and Edna had shared the same bed for some forty years. He paced. He chain-smoked Kents. He turned down Thanksgiving invitations at his grandniece Toni Mollett’s home, because he couldn’t bear to go without his wife. He’d pace the supermarket aisles by himself, something he’d never done before.
The home at 1663 Grandview was not what it had been—no longer a joyous receiving ground for his friends and neighbors. Calls from friends were fewer. There was sadness in every room.