Forging genius : the making of Casey Stengel / Steven Goldman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goldman, Steven, 1970-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Stengel, Casey.

Baseball managers--United States--Biography.

Baseball managers.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 303 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Potomac Books, [2005]

Summary:

Baseball insiders were stunned when Casey Stengel was named manager of the New York Yankees for 1949. His work managing the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves was long on personality but remarkably short on success. The media thought the Yankees would never be able to compete with the Red Sox or Indians with "that clown" in charge. Indeed, at first the Yankees looked like a banged-up bunch of also-rans, not like a team about to embark on five straight championships. Yet Stengel seemed confident of success. As Steven Goldman explains, people had forgotten that-more than anyone in baseball-Casey knew how to come back.

The quintessentially resilient Stengel endured bad breaks, learned from them, and emerged stronger for the experience. In trying to win with the star-poor Dodgers and Braves, he learned strategic techniques that would later help him win with the Yankees. Thus Goldman refutes claims that Stengel's Yankees were so talented that any manager could have won with them. Rather, the Yankees required constant rebuilding, and after running two of the game's sad-sack franchises Stengel knew how to cope. Goldman retraces Stengel's baseball education in playing for the great John McGraw, from whom he also learned that success permits no room for nostalgia. Goldman follows Stengel through those formative years with the Dogers and Braves, his return to the minors, a spat with Bill Veeck, and his success as a businessman away from the diamond, all of which contributed to his Yankees success.

Forging Genius: The Making of Casey Stengel gives insights into Stengel's irrepressible love of the game and his incorrigible desire to entertain. As Casey put it, "Because I can make people laugh, some of them think I'm a damn fool." His humor camouflaged a relentless hunger for success, glory, and respectability. In giving Stengel he respect the desperately sought, Goldman solves a mystery that seemingly baffled Stengel's contemporaries: how the same man could be so goofy and so smart at the same time. In the process, Goldman reveals an unprecedented vision of one man's lifelong pursuit of genius on the baseball diamond.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Who Was Casey Stengel? 1

Chapter 2 The Summer of Second Chances 7

Chapter 3 I Will Handle This Situation in My Own Way 27

Chapter 4 Dutch, the Left-Handed Dentist 49

Chapter 5 Casey, Where Are Your Pants? 85

Chapter 6 The New Riot Act 101

Chapter 7 Out of the Trenches by Christmas 141

Chapter 8 He Came to See Poverty 163

Chapter 9 Getting Paid for Losing 180

Chapter 10 Trying to Keep My Boys 190

Chapter 11 It's a Grand World-If Only it Would Stop Raining 200

Chapter 12 Where I'll Be a Year From Now 227

Chapter 13 Graduation Day 244.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-290) and index.

ISBN:

1574888730

OCLC:

57134354