Casey Stengel

     One of the things I miss about playing and watching baseball is the storytelling. Even in a small, summer league we had stories we told each other long after the games were over and we had moved on to other leagues, other sports, and other ways to pass the time.

     Baseball is slow enough and can be viewed safely from up close so the players faces can be seen clearly. The fact it is mostly played outdoors in the summertime helps leave indelible impressions that can last a lifetime. Take a seat behind home plate and you will be able to watch the unfolding confrontations between pitchers and batters. You'll see the struggle in their faces and the elation when one or the other succeeds.

   
      Casey Stengel played baseball as a rightfielder mostly, and is best known as the manager of the NY Yankees and the hapless NY Mets. The first was a dynasty and the second an expansion team.

"I broke in with four hits, and the writers promptly declared they had seen the new Ty Cobb. It took me only a few days to correct that impression."

     Casey had plenty of stories to regale the sports reporters with by the time he was hired to manage the Mets in the early 1960s. Though we all have our own stories which we can entertain each other with, baseball related or not. Baseball just receives an inordinate amount of credit for generating good, tall tales. The longer since you last played it seems the better the stories become. We tend to leave out the unimportant details and focus on the parts which still amuse many years later. That's what I miss, not the sore muscles, sprains, and ignominious losses. It was always the comradery before and after the games were played that contained the best times. The games went by so fast and we often didn't keep score too well. The games become just a background memory for the good times we had just tossing the ball around the infield or the outfield. Laughing at dropped balls and cheering each other on for a diving catch were so much more important than trying to remember who was ahead in the score.