The routine of his annual baseball appearances meant a lot to Casey. He went to spring training with the Mets in 1971, went to Old-Timers’ Days in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, two in New York, the Hall of Fame induction, and an event in Kansas City in appreciation of Satchel Paige, who was elected to the Hall of Fame that year—one more chance to “go home.”
In November, the New York Post’s Maury Allen, the writer among “my writers” who most admired Casey, announced that the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association would change the name of its “Retroactive Award” to a “Casey Stengel You-Could-Look-It-Up Award” each year, with Casey being the first winner in 1970 (for his 1923 World Series performance with the New York Giants). It would honor some special achievement in the game that had been forgotten and never sufficiently recognized. Mostly, it would honor Casey, by using one of his pet phrases, one that Allen would use as the title of his 1979 Stengel biography. None of the modern group of “my writers” loved Casey more than Allen did, so it was not surprising that he led the charge to create this award.
“I always remember the first names of the writers, never the ballplayers,” said Casey at an Old–Timers’ event. It was another secret of his success.
In 1972, that special uniform with all the team logos was unveiled, and Casey came to home plate at Old-Timers’ Day at Shea in a horse and buggy, wearing it proudly. There was also a Salute to Casey Stengel Day at Dodger Stadium in June, which featured the return of Jackie Robinson to a Dodgers event. Like Casey with the Yankees, Jackie had gone through a long estrangement.
While cutting back on his travel to help attend to Edna, Casey did make it to Yankee Stadium in 1973 for the final Old-Timers’ Day before the ballpark was gutted and renovated.
At the end of that season, he went to the World Series to see his Mets play Oakland.
“I went to the World Series at Oakland when the Mets were there,” he said at a rare banquet appearance after the season, talking about a flu bug that hit him. “That’s when I got it. I had a stomach thing but I also had, which is a bad place to get the flu. I have what is called, something that has kept me from, I can go out walking but I can’t go every place they have an old timers game. But at my age, I have been very fortunate to see the country and work there. I worked in New York, which was very good to me, and I worked in New England, where I broke my leg, and I was born in Kansas City and now I am living in the West but I am having trouble in the West because I don’t know Spanish too well. And thank you very much.”
He was not a man for all seasons; he was a man for baseball season. But, culturally, he came to represent all the regions of the United States—not just those in which the baseball season took place—thanks to his half-century of spring training in the South, and, of course, those oil fields in Texas.
In May 1974, Casey acknowledged publicly that Edna had been transferred to a nursing home. Now he was able, even as his eighty-fourth birthday approached, to keep up a pace of appearances around the country, encouraged by friends who thought it would do him good. His admission of Edna’s illness brought with it a certain freedom. Now he could talk about it. To old friends who asked, “How’s Edna?” he might even point to his neck and say, “From here up…nothing.” Dark humor. There would be no gala fiftieth wedding-anniversary party on August 18. It could have been a grand event.
In June, at the request of his old third baseman Dr. Bobby Brown, he attended an Old-Timers’ Day held by the Texas Rangers. Dr. Brown had retired from his Fort Worth cardiology practice and been named interim president of the Rangers. (He would later be president of the American League.)
Since the theme of the event was old Yankees, and current Yankees were the opponent, and since Billy Martin was managing the Rangers, a Yankee publicist was present. The Yankees Old-Timers’ Day was in two weeks, but Casey had not yet responded to his invitation, though he had attended the last four. The publicist decided to ask him in person.
“Now, goddamn it, I told you I’d tell you when I knew,” he gruffly responded, sending the humbled publicist (me) on his way. The short-tempered outburst was unusual; perhaps it reflected the stress Casey was feeling, unable to visit Edna, and his generally depressed spirits.
He did attend the Yankees’ Old-Timers’ Day, which was held at Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium was undergoing renovations. He wore his multi-team cap with his Yankee uniform.
A few weeks later, looking very southern California (checkered pants, white shoes), he returned to Cooperstown for the annual induction day. This time, Mantle and Ford were being installed, and Casey seemed to be in a great mood, happily posing with his two stars for hundreds of photos. It was reported that, aside from the celebrants Mantle and Ford, Stengel, Musial, Spahn, and Campanella got the biggest response from the fans.
If Mickey or Whitey thought this might be the last time they would see him, the day did not give way to any emotional confessions or memories between them. They were now just three old soldiers of the baseball wars, bound together for posterity in the Hall of Fame.
Casey went to Los Angeles to tape a thirty-minute program for PBS, hosted by Curt Gowdy, discussing the 1956 World Series. The Yankees were also represented by Mel Allen, Mickey Mantle, and Don Larsen; Duke Snider, Sal Maglie, and Clem Labine represented the Dodgers. The program was called The Way It Was, and Casey was paid four hundred dollars for his participation. Its premiere, on September 25, 1975, would mark his last appearance on television. In it, he was uncharacteristically laconic.
Casey struggled with the flu during the winter of 1974–75, and it made him cranky. When the phone did ring, he’d sometimes answer by saying, “I ain’t dead yet.” But it was debilitating. Whereas he used to go to the supermarket, after Edna was hospitalized, he now sent June Bowlin or Bobby Case on errands. Said Case, “He missed the supermarket—he loved being recognized and chatting with fans.”
He missed his first New York Baseball Writers’ Dinner in about twenty-five years, and then missed the Mets’ spring-training camp in St. Petersburg. People worried about him, and talked about how it wasn’t spring training without him. Indeed, Casey and spring training had gone together since 1910—except for 1937, when he was paid not to manage, and 1961, when he was out of the game.
“He had the flu, and he certainly felt lousy,” said Bob Case. “But even at eighty-four, there were no signs that he might be dying.”
But there were signs.
Though he had recovered enough to go to the Mets’ Old-Timers’ Day on June 28, he expressed regrets at not being able to attend an Old-Timers’ Game in Denver, even after his friend A. Ray Smith, who owned the minor-league Tulsa Oilers, offered to fly to California to accompany him there. “My belly hurts,” he told people.
The Yankees’ Old-Timers’ Day was August 2, 1975, and what a day that turned out to be. Billy Martin was named Yankees manager. The prodigal son was coming home, ending an eighteen-year exile that went back to his 1957 trade to Kansas City. “Casey’s Boy” (as his eventual plaque in Monument Park would read) was replacing Bill Virdon. George Steinbrenner, the team’s owner since 1973, couldn’t resist the opportunity to bring home the Yankees legend.
Martin had written to Casey on Texas Rangers stationery earlier in the year, looking to make peace with the old man. Casey responded politely, but to him, there never was a lack of “peace” in their relationship. “He always took it too personally,” Stengel told Bob Case. “Getting traded is part of baseball. It’s the industry you’re in. It wasn’t the big deal he always made of it.”
It would have been a photographer’s feast to have Casey present the day Martin became manager, but he couldn’t make it. Too ill to travel now, he instead recorded a five-minute tape wishing everyone well, concluding, “I appreciate the amazin’ ability that they accomplished under my management.”
The quality of the tape wasn’t strong enough to play over the Shea Stadium PA system, so it was instead played at the Old-Timers’ party in the Diamond Club, where it was well received by the guests, who then shared many Casey stories.
This was a better audience than Casey himself had enjoyed in years. It had come to a point where he would be at a dinner, and as he walked to the mike, the audience members—all too familiar with hearing ten minutes of Stengelese at such events—would roll their eyes or head for the restroom. At least, that’s what those who had been through it for years would do. For newcomers, it was a treat.
On July 30, Casey turned eighty-five. He had a quiet day at home—no celebratory birthday cake at home plate, with thousands singing “Happy Birthday.”
Edna had suffered a stroke earlier in the year, and now she was not only mentally disabled, but physically. Still, Casey went to see her almost daily.
He did a long interview on the phone with Dave Anderson of The New York Times, which ran on August 5. He expressed regrets about his inability to travel as much as he had done before and told Anderson that he visited Edna every day. He complained about his driver’s license being taken away and about the effects on his body from time zone shifts when he went back east and returned home.
“This time I got to stay here too because my wife is in a home,” he said.
He seemed to sigh as he evaluated his lot in life.
“I promised everyone in New York [that he’d attend Old-Timers’ Day], but I can’t make that. I can’t make every one because I am handicapped. I have a terrible cold and I have lost my voice.”
“The Ol’ Perfessor” was winding down.
He didn’t travel to Cooperstown for Induction Day on August 18 (the Mets’ announcer, Ralph Kiner, was among those honored), but he had one public appearance left. He accepted an invitation to the Dodgers Old-Timers’ Day on August 24, which honored members of the 1955 world-championship team. Red Patterson, his original Yankees publicist (who had run the Dodgers’ PR since 1954), called to invite him. His housekeeper, June Bowlin, and her son Greg drove him there. He appeared quite thin and frail.
Casey’s knee was hurting him, and he asked the Dodgers’ executive Fred Claire if a doctor might take a look at it. Claire summoned Dr. Robert Woods, who said, “When did this first start bothering you?”
Casey responded, “Oh, I think it was about 1938 or ’39, when I was managing the Boston Bees.”
Dr. Woods smiled and told him not to stand on it for too long.
The ’55 team was the one that had beaten Stengel’s Yankees to win their only Brooklyn title. Surrounding Casey on this occasion were players he had later managed at the Mets—Craig, Snider, Zimmer, and, briefly Clem Labine, along with great names like Campanella, Newcombe, Reese, Gilliam, Koufax, and Drysdale. Gil Hodges and Jackie Robinson had both died three years earlier. Yet, despite being surrounded by baseball people, he was out of sorts. He looked very frail in his multi-logo uniform and cap. And, make no mistake, it was tiring for an eighty-five-year-old man to put on that uniform one more time. But he got the greatest ovation of the day.
After the field ceremony, he changed into street clothes and sat for only a few innings behind home plate, seated with Rod Dedeaux and the actor Cary Grant, and then said he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go home. He didn’t smile much; he was uncomfortable.
On Monday, September 15, after a rather uncomfortable weekend, Casey left his home for a “general checkup” at Glendale Memorial Hospital. He would never return home. June Bowlin drove him to the hospital, and he fought against being helped out of the car. “He had somewhat of a bump on his abdomen,” said Bob Case. “We thought it might be a hernia.”
A decision was made to conduct exploratory surgery on Casey, who continued to complain of a bellyache.
“The doctors opened him up, saw cancer, and closed him up,” said Case. “Surgery and treatment would be too much for him at eighty-five.”
During his hospital stay, he did what he always did—he followed baseball. On Saturday, September 27, he watched the NBC Game of the Week, Pittsburgh at St. Louis, with Joe Garagiola and his old shortstop Tony Kubek announcing. The Pirates had clinched the National League East and were getting ready to face the great Cincinnati Reds—the Big Red Machine—in the National League Championship Series.
In those days, the playing of the national anthem was part of the telecast—unlike today, when it’s generally done before the game goes on air. Knowing the ritual well, Casey decided to rise from his bed and stand for the anthem. “I might as well do this one last time,” he said, as he stood barefooted in a hospital gown (open at the back), with his hand over his heart.
“One last time.” Obviously, he had a sense that the end was near. And if he did indeed think he was dying, surely the absence of Edna at this moment must have been on his mind.
The regular season ended the next day. Bob Case visited him that day and read The Sporting News to him. “I really didn’t think he was dying,” said Case.
On Monday, September 29, his friend and neighbor, coach Rod Dedeaux, now acting as de facto Stengel spokesman, publicly revealed the illness. It was a malignant sarcoma, a cancer of the lymph glands, centered in his abdomen.
He died that night, at 10:58 p.m. Edna’s niece Lynn Rossi was the only one with him at the time. He was comatose by then; she didn’t think he heard her at all or knew she was there, even as she patted his hair. She watched him take two long-drawn-out breaths. A third one never came. She went into the hall to find a nurse and said softly, “I think he just said goodbye.”
With his brother and sister having predeceased him, and since none of the three had had children, he was the last of the Stengel line.
Casey’s dying so late at night turned out to benefit his afternoon writers back east, since it was too late for the East Coast morning papers to report it. So it was a “gift” to Maury Allen, who loved him the most and who could write the first column about him as he got ready to cover the playoffs.
“He is gone and I am supposed to cry, but I laugh. Every time I saw the man, every time I heard his voice, every time his name was mentioned, the creases in my mouth would give way and a smile would come to my face.”
“He was the happiest man I’ve ever seen,” said Richie Ashburn.
The wake, funeral, and cemetery arrangements were made by Edna’s brother John and by June Bowlin, with assistance from Rod Dedeaux.
The funeral would be held on Monday, October 6, the off-day before the third game of the American League Championship Series, in Oakland. The scheduling of the funeral was an accommodation to “baseball people” who might be able to attend, with the post-season having swung to the West Coast.
The night after the all-day viewing at Scovern Mortuary in Glendale, there was a wake at Casey’s home. Given Casey’s age and the joyous life he had led, it was not a sad occasion, and, not surprisingly, a lot of drinking took place. There were a lot of bottles in the house, which might as well be consumed.
In the kitchen, a group of men gathered to tell Casey stories. When Billy Martin, the only representative of the current Yankees organization, entered, Joe Stephenson, a former catcher and current scout, greeted him with an exaggerated “Oh, it’s the great Billy Martin!” or something to that effect. And Billy, true to form, responded with something like “Yeah, what about it?” And the next thing those assembled knew, the two of them were in the backyard, near the swimming pool, fighting like schoolkids in the playground—except that Stephenson was fifty-four, Martin forty-seven. It was quickly broken up.
The weather was rainy on the 6th, the day of the funeral, which was held at the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn. A Methodist minister, Dr. Kenneth A. Carlson, presided. There was an overflow gathering of several hundred, everyone from baseball scouts to neighbors to teenage boys. But it did not, unfortunately, include Edna Stengel, whose condition made her attendance impossible. She was disabled physically and mentally and would not have known what was going on.
The honorary pallbearers were Emmett Ashford, Buzzie Bavasi, Peter Bavasi, Bobby Case, Jerry Coleman, Jocko Conlan, Bob Fishel, Whitey Ford, M. Donald Grant, Fred Haney, Babe Herman, George Kelly, Tom Lasorda, Joe McDonald, Lee MacPhail, Billy Martin, Harry Minor, Tom Morgan, Irv Noren, Red Patterson, Bob Scheffing, Ken Smith, A. Ray Smith, Chuck Stevens, Horace Stoneham, Maury Wills, and Dutch Zwilling. Zwilling, two years older than Casey, went back the furthest with him.*
The Mets contingent was a little smaller than expected because of the passing of the team owner Mrs. Joan Payson, who had died on October 4, the day before Casey’s wake. Her memorial service would be the day after Casey’s.
The coffin included folded Yankee and Met uniforms.
Rod Dedeaux and Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn gave eulogies. Kuhn said: “No one has a greater debt to Casey Stengel than baseball. When you think of all the things he could have been, and been outstanding at, to have him 100 percent in baseball was a wonderful thing for us. He helped us not to take ourselves too seriously. He made more fans for baseball than any other man who ever lived.” Dedeaux, quoted the Los Angeles Times’s Jim Murray: “Well, God is certainly getting an earful tonight.”
There was much laughter during the ceremony, although Billy Martin was seen crying. The night before the funeral, June Bowlin gave Billy permission to sleep in Casey’s bed.
When the service concluded, Casey was buried in Forest Lawn’s “Court of Freedom,” with a spot reserved next to him for Edna.
Ed Stack, the secretary (and future president) of the Baseball Hall of Fame, had been simultaneously contacted by Arthur Richman, the former sportswriter who was then public-relations director of the Mets, and by representatives of the Stengel family, who expressed interest in having Casey buried in Cooperstown. Richman was sure that was the place for Stengel. “We did not have any burial plots,” said Stack, “and so I went out and bought four plots in the local cemetery, thinking this might happen. But the family finally decided on Glendale, feeling no one would visit the grave in Cooperstown, and we eventually used those plots for Ken Smith and his wife, and for Emmett Ashford’s ashes. Afterwards, I was invited out to tour the house and claim what I wanted for the Hall. We already had some great Casey material, which he donated at the time of his induction. I put yellow stickers on everything in the house, basement to attic, and then we did the same in the pool house and the garage. There was his big black Cadillac, full of dents, as though it had been through a Demolition Derby. We arranged for a Casey exhibit and I asked the family for twenty-five thousand dollars to help ship everything to Cooperstown and to arrange for a display, which they accommodated.”
The Old-Timers’ Day uniform with all the team logos was among the items retrieved.
On November 4, a memorial service was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York; three hundred people turned out for a forty-minute service conducted by Terence Cardinal Cooke. Kuhn read from the Book of Wisdom, Grant delivered a eulogy and Robert Merrill sang the Lord’s Prayer. Mel Allen and a number of active baseball executives were present. Yogi Berra, soon to return to the Yankees as a coach after being fired by the Mets as manager during the 1975 season, was the only player in attendance.
Casey’s burial place has a simple marker for him and for Edna. On the adjacent wall is a more elaborate plaque, featuring his image in a Yankee cap and jersey with crossed bats, and the inscription:
CHARLES DILLON STENGEL
‘CASEY’
FOR OVER SIXTY YEARS ONE OF AMERICA’S
FOLK HEROES WHO CONTRIBUTED IMMENSELY
TO THE LORE AND LANGUAGE OF OUR
COUNTRY’S NATIONAL PASTIME, BASEBALL.
SON OF LOUIS E. AND JENNIE STENGEL
BORN KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI JULY 30, 1890
MARRIED EDNA LAWSON AUGUST 18, 1924
INDUCTED NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME JULY 25, 1966
DIED GLENDALE, CALIFORNIA SEPTEMBER 29, 1975
“THERE COMES A TIME IN EVERY MAN’S LIFE
AND I’VE HAD PLENTY OF THEM”
CASEY STENGEL
* Of those not previously identified in this book, Buzzie Bavasi, longtime Dodgers general manager, was president of the San Diego Padres; his son Peter was general manager of the Padres; Minor was a longtime Mets scout who lived in Long Beach; Scheffing was a Mets scout who had been replaced by McDonald as general manager in 1975; Ken Smith was a longtime New York sportswriter who became PR director of the Hall of Fame in 1976; Chuck Stevens headed the Association of Professional Baseball Players of America, which Casey served as a director; Wills was an NBC broadcaster following his 1972 retirement as a player; and Ashford, the first black umpire in the Major Leagues, was working for the Office of the Commissioner.