Billy Martin was the only Yankee who wore a black armband in the pennant-winning season of 1976, in the newly renovated Yankee Stadium, to honor Casey.
On July 30, his birthday, the Yankees unveiled a plaque in the Monument Park section of their ballpark (one for Joe McCarthy, ordered at the same time, had been installed on April 21), which read:
CHARLES DILLON
“CASEY” STENGEL
1890–1975
BRIGHTENED BASEBALL FOR OVER 50 YEARS
WITH SPIRIT OF ETERNAL YOUTH
YANKEE MANAGER 1949–1960 WINNING
10 PENNANTS AND 7 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
INCLUDING A RECORD 5 CONSECUTIVE
1949–1953
ERECTED BY
NEW YORK YANKEES
JULY 30, 1976
Edna died on February 3, 1978, some five years after her paralyzing stroke, and some seven years after the first signs of what was likely Alzheimer’s. She was eighty-three. The conservator of her estate was her brother, John M. “Jack” Lawson.
June Bowlin, who lived with her family in the Stengel home until Edna’s death (at which point the house was sold), made the formal announcement of Edna’s death. In 1981, she would marry Jack, whose first wife, Helen, had died after being burned in a fire in 1980. Jack was still chairman of Valley National Bank, But, ill with brain cancer, he died soon after his marriage to June. While he was dying in August 1981, he expressed surprise to learn that he was married. After his death, the Stengel Estate Trust was entrusted to John M. Lawson II, his son. From time to time, John was asked to donate items for charitable auctions, which he did.
Edna’s surviving sister, Mae Hunter, the oldest of the four Lawson children, died in 1982.
Casey’s will, drawn in 1933, had left everything to Edna.
One document in Casey’s files showed a net worth of $1.3 million in 1965. But he was still making lots of money. In 1975, his final year, his tax return showed $162,678 income (equivalent to approximately $714,000 in 2016 dollars), largely from interest ($66,272), dividends ($34,485), and “other than wages” ($49,021), on top of $12,500 from the Mets, who were still paying him annually despite an earlier report of “no more.”
The distribution of Casey’s wealth passed to Edna, then to her heirs, but it made no one wealthy. It sort of got “watered down.”
The furnishings were distributed throughout the family; items of unknown worth were auctioned in Los Angeles and purchased by family members.
From 1978 to 1981, the baseball memorabilia that the family then possessed was kept at the home of Jack Lawson. Upon his death in ’81, it was moved to a storage facility and a safe-deposit box. (In the 1970s, few gave much thought to the possible cash value of memorabilia.) In 1996, John M. Lawson II entrusted what was left of the estate to Toni Mollett Harsh, grandniece of Casey and Edna. All business activities and memorabilia were transferred to Reno, Nevada, where she resided and served as a city councilwoman. Everything was carefully stored in a secured, temperature-controlled space.
Casey had kept a lot of cash in his home, estimated by the family at sixty thousand dollars, and he had given Mets equipment man Herb Norman (whom he called “Logan,” after his old Giants equipment man, Pop Logan, circa 1921) a sack of cash (about thirty-five thousand dollars) to hold for him, but in the fog of disorder that followed his death, it was June Bowlin who got most of his memorabilia. June’s stepdaughter, Sandra Waltrip, consigned the treasure chest of baseball memorabilia to Heritage Sports Collectibles for an October 2005 auction. The catalogue introduction to “The Casey Stengel Collection,” ninety-five lots over twenty-seven pages of its catalogue, read: “The massive archive of material that comprises the Casey Stengel Collection comes to us through the family of the woman who cared for the Hall of Fame manager in the final years of his life. Thankfully for baseball history, and for our Heritage bidders specifically, Stengel was a tremendous ‘pack rat’ who seemed to throw away almost nothing, and certainly not anything with noteworthy baseball significance….All pieces offered have been in the sole possession of the family of Stengel’s caretaker since the passing of Casey in 1975, and are offered to the collecting public for the first time.”
The auction showed that Casey did indeed save World Series programs (from as far back as 1913), the program from his 1924 European tour, old contracts, his baptismal certificate, letters sent to family members (meaning he had retrieved them at some point from their homes), a long letter from Ty Cobb, caps, Old-Timers’ gifts, press pins, lineup cards (including Game Seven of the 1960 World Series), photos from dental school, and a ration coupon book from the Great War.
It was during a 2006 gathering that the heirs (descended from Edna’s side of the family), first learned of the 2005 Heritage Sports Collectibles auction. At this time, there were eight beneficiaries who shared in licensing revenue and made estate decisions: John Lawson II’s widow, Susie; Lynn Rossi; Toni Harsh and her brother Casey Mollett; and the four children of Ann Lawson Keller.*1 In 2006, three of the eight family members investigated auction houses, either to obtain an appraised value or to plan on auctioning the remaining items in Toni’s possession. (Toni still uses Casey’s desk from 1663 Grandview.) Sotheby’s was selected to conduct an auction. Some items, including a number of cartoon art pieces, were purchased at the last minute by Toni, who decided they should be held by the family in the hopes of eventually creating a museum.
This auction took place in 2007. It included Casey’s own copy of his Hall of Fame plaque (which, along with his Induction Day photos, went for $24,000), mementos from the 1955 Japan tour (including his kimono), his 1957 American League Championship gold cuff links ($72,000), a gold watch from Joe DiMaggio, his 1948 Pacific Coast League Championship ring, his twelve Louisville Slugger commemorative black bats from his twelve World Series ($27,000 for the lot), his Mets contracts from 1963 and 1964, his honorary 1969 Mets world-championship ring ($78,000), his 1951 Yankees World Series ring ($180,000), and a signed lineup card from the first game of the 1951 World Series, featuring Mantle and DiMaggio ($27,000).
Inspired by her visit east at the time of the auction, which included a visit to the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls, New Jersey, Toni created the Casey Stengel Baseball Center in 2007 “to serve as a sports based educator in team building, health and journalism.”
A Board of Directors was elected, and the center proceeded to focus on educating the public on the life of Casey Stengel and his impact on baseball. A Web site, CaseyStengel.org, was created, along with a Facebook page, and the center works with the Stengel Field Foundation in seeking to restore Casey Stengel Field in Glendale.
Casey’s popularity remained high for a long time. Not a lot of his classic Stengelese moments lived into the YouTube age, but those that did still produced laughter.
Robert Creamer’s 1984 biography of him, published nine years after his death, was very well received.
In 1996, along came Joe Torre to manage the Yankees. Like Casey, he had had mediocre results with bad National League teams, and then, suddenly, found himself rolling in the riches of talented players. His Yankee success—six American League pennants, four of them leading to world championships—thrust him into the Hall of Fame, just as it had Casey. But, whereas Casey had arrived as a “clown,” Torre was greeted by a “Clueless Joe” tabloid headline. For both men, good players produced success, bad players did not. It wasn’t rocket science.
Casey’s work with the Mets, though, will be difficult to duplicate. Indeed, few expansion teams in any sport have tried the formula—a quotable, fan-popular man who would charm the press and deflect attention away from ineptness on the field. Today’s expansion teams are better stocked with players and better able to improve their situations quickly. There may never again be a 1962 Mets.
For a long time, “You’re full of shit and I’ll tell you why,” “Most people my age are dead at the present time,” “You could look it up,” “Tell ’em I’m being embalmed,” “Like Ned in the Third [or Fourth] reader,” “splendid” “commence,” and other forms of Stengelese were regularly heard in press boxes. The players had their own pet expressions: “Hold the gun” was a call to hitters in the on-deck circle for whom he had decided to pinch-hit. The sportswriter Jack Lang continued to call Maury Allen and George Vecsey “Doctor” long after Casey died, since that was what he had called them. The generation that covered Casey departed those press boxes in the 1990s, leaving the younger ones to find other quotable figures.
His use of the word “amazin’ ” lived on with the team as a semi-official nickname. “The Amazins” was common for headline writers and still in use when the Mets won the 2015 National League pennant. Casey had helped birth the Mets by calling everything about them—the players, the opponents, the new ballpark, the fans, the logo, the mascot, the writers—amazin’.
The property at 1663 Grandview was sold in November 1978 to Dr. James C. Davis and his wife, Virginia, who passed it on to their daughter Cheryl. She sold it in 2012 to a Hollywood sitcom star and her husband for $1.9 million, and in 2014, the home was approved for the Glendale Register of Historic Resources as the Lawson/Stengel House.
Valley National Bank was sold to the Italian company that owned First Los Angeles Bank in 1987, and then to Wells Fargo Bank in 1989. The oil wells in Texas keep producing small annual checks for the eight family heirs. Casey’s oil holdings produced $1,968 for him in 1965, and then it fell below a thousand dollars annually.
A youth league called the Casey Stengel League, for the age group just above Babe Ruth League baseball, flourished for a time. The New York chapter of the Society of American Baseball Research named itself the Casey Stengel Chapter. The Casey Stengel You-Could-Look-It-Up Award remained a staple of the New York Baseball Writers’ Dinner.
A one-man play called The Amazin’ Casey Stengel or Can’t Anybody Here Speak This Game?—starring Paul Dooley—ran off-Broadway for thirteen performances in 1981, and a PBS special, Casey Stengel, starring Charles Durning, aired on May 6, 1981.
Stengel Field in Glendale, showing its age, was condemned and then demolished in July 2015, though a campaign was established to rebuild it. In its final years, it was home to Crescenta Valley High School and Glendale Community College teams, along with Little League and Babe Ruth League programs and high school graduations. The final game played at the facility was a local Babe Ruth League championship in May 2015.
The Casey Stengel Depot, a transportation building near Shea Stadium, houses New York City buses. Shea Stadium was torn down and replaced by Citi Field in 2009, but Casey lives on there in the Mets Hall of Fame and with his retired number above the left-field seats. The area outside Gate E is called Casey Stengel Plaza. In 2014, the Mets celebrated Fan Appreciation Day by giving out Casey Stengel bobbleheads. Toni Harsh threw out the ceremonial first pitch. The demolition of Shea brought down the final regular-season ballpark that Casey had called home as a player or a manager.*2
The noted American sculptor Rhoda Sherbell, created a forty-three-inch bronze of Casey, hands tucked into the back pockets of his Mets uniform, and castings are on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, the Baseball Hall of Fame, the University Place Hotel at the Indiana University–Purdue University campus in Indianapolis, and the outdoor sculpture collection at Hofstra University. Casey posed for the artist (to much teasing from his players) in 1965, and he gave her a Mets uniform, complete with socks and shoes, to work from. The ones on display indoors include his Mets uniform, painted on; the ones displayed outdoors are bronze without the paint.
In Cooperstown, his plaque is among those most photographed by visitors.
Phil Jackson, the great NBA coach, grew up a Yankees fan in Montana.
We got the Yankees on the radio, and my uncles and my father would crowd around the car radio to pull it in. That was around 1953, so, naturally, I became a Casey Stengel fan, too.
He always got the media on his side. That was in my head. Sometimes I’d give an answer and I’d say to myself, “I think I said that in Stengelese.” And I’ve been accused of using the press to get a message to a player. I was probably channeling Casey when I did that.
He kept egos in check with a sense of humor, and I thought about the way he kept things light, kept things on an even keel.
Yogi Berra died at ninety in 2015, forty years after Casey, and the many tributes to him were, of necessity, largely tributes to Casey as well, and the roles they played in each other’s lives. There would be no new Yogi-isms and no more Stengelese in the English language.
When Casey managed, it was said he was mentored by McGraw and, to some extent, Wilbert Robinson. When Billy Martin managed, it was said he was emulating Stengel. Today, there is no one who manages in the style of Stengel, because of the scientific use of situational statistics (Casey used them from instinct and memory), and the use of replays over disputed calls, which keeps managers in the dugout and prevents them from charging up their players with fiery arguments.
Platooning lives on, however, since it is based on the statistics that show who does best against whom; in fact, it is so widespread as to be no longer considered a Casey Stengel innovation or tool. And, of course, it wasn’t his innovation; he just had the abundance of players to work with, and he made it popular.
In 2009, the MLB Network introduced a series called Prime 9 in which they rated many areas of the game, such as best right fielder, rookie season, unbreakable records, and so forth. On the category they called “Characters of the Game,” the third episode in the series, Casey Stengel finished first, beating out such people as Yogi Berra, Babe Ruth, Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Satchel Paige…Well, he beat everyone in baseball history, some sixteen thousand people.
It was forty-four years since he had last worn a uniform, but it still rang true.