Stengel's Oddball Rhetoric Unmatched

He spoke in a manner unlike any other big league manager I'd ever met. Nodding his head and looking you straight in the eye, he was an expert in avoiding answers to any questions when he so wished. His chief tactic was to change the subject - immediately.

This was the likable, legendary Casey Stengel, the gray-haired, craggy-faced, gravelly voiced former Yankee skipper. Starting in 1949, this crafty manager had led the New York team to 10 American League pennants in 12 years.

He was a master at his own style of rhetoric, which often was flavored with non-sequiturs. Sportswriters agreed that he fractured the English language. It was said he spoke Stengelese. Some referred to him in their columns as "the perfesser." He frequently would make his points in a manner that closed the door to any rebuttal.

He was once asked during a Yankee road trip why he forbade his players from visiting the bar at the hotel where the team was stopping. "That's 'cause that's where I do my drinking," was his ready answer.

There came that critical day at the end of the 1960 season. Stengel had led the Yankees to their tenth pennant. It was then the club's front office intimated the veteran manager had decided to retire, at 70. Stengel was indignant and responded, "Ain't so. I'm getting the air 'cause of my age. I'm told the club's putting in a 'youth program.' I've promised myself never to become 70 again."

No one could rebut that. It took only two years for Stengel to be back in baseball, this time as manager of the hapless New York Mets as they made their National League debut. The new team suffered from poor hitting and inferior pitching.

Stengel finally called it quits after the Mets had finished last for four consecutive years. It was near the end of his tenure that I got a brainstorm, while reading one of his quotes in which he bemoaned being the Mets' manager.

"I got hitters that ain't hitting, and pitchers who can find the plate only at dinner time," he said.

I recalled that years earlier, Will Rogers, the late humorist and actor, had been the author of brief, homey pieces that had appeared in hundreds of newspapers. Subjects might range from criticism of Congress to the new style of women's dresses.

At the time, my brother Jack and I had syndicated a column called "What's the Law?" that found its way into about 100 daily newspapers before we tired of it. Why not try to have daily ghostwritten Stengel pieces syndicated?

Because Joe Durso was the Mets' regular writer for The New York Times and knew Stengel well, I approached him with the idea. I suggested we would be the ghostwriters - not an unusual arrangement in those days. We would have Stengel speak about baseball and other subjects in his offbeat manner.

In the meantime, I contacted the nationally known Bell McClure Syndicate. Its head editor was interested. Then I sat down and wrote a few typical pieces, one of which began this way: "I see by the papers some writers is picking up my Mets to land up out of the cellar. Them writers has been loco before. I remember one training camp we wuz having a heck of a spring even if the fishing wasn't good and we had lots of rain. But by the end of that year we were back home - in last place."

The ghostwriting deal with Stengel never materialized. Durso told me that Stengel and his wife Edna liked the idea, but that they wanted too much of a cut of the potential income.

And so I gave up on the idea and decided to wait until another Stengel came along.

One never did.