Time Out for Casey Stengel : 50 Years of Baseball History Stored in Montrose

Stashed away in a giant crate in a Montrose warehouse are the remnants of a legend, mementos of one of America’s great folk heroes.

His name was Casey Stengel. And he was many things to many people: Elder statesman of sport, umpire baiter, base line comedian, bank executive, diamond strategist, civic booster, wily negotiator, genial host, garrulous commentator, major league legend, curmudgeon.

And pack-rat.

Mementos of a baseball career that spanned more than a half century--first as a player and then as one of the game’s most famous managers--filled up Stengel’s Glendale home during his lifetime. He died at age 85 in 1975. His wife, Edna, 83, died in 1978. The house was sold, and many items in the collection were shipped to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., where the Stengel exhibit is one of the largest.

But many more items remain.

“There is so much stuff here, it is frightening,” said John Lawson Jr., Stengel’s nephew and a trustee of the estate. “What do you do with it?”

Good question.

Lawson, who is president of the Glendale Chamber of Commerce, said several civic leaders had suggested after Stengel’s death that a local hall of fame be established for the Stengel memorabilia. But Lawson said “nothing concrete” ever came of the proposal because of its huge projected cost.

The Glendale Public Library had offered to catalogue the Stengel collection. But when library director Jack Ramsey saw the size of the job, he declined the task. “It’s really quite a remarkable collection,” Ramsey said, “but it would have filled one of our branch libraries!”

Lawson said several organizations and universities have asked for a few items, but the family had agreed not to break up the collection.

“One of Casey’s last wishes was that we keep his collection intact,” Lawson explained. “He didn’t want it just scattered to the wind.”

Which leaves Lawson with a problem. As it stands, the Stengel collection fills a crate measuring 8 feet high, 5 feet wide and 7 feet deep. In addition to newspaper clippings, notes, trophies, and plaques, there are autographed baseballs (44 of them), commemorative bats (several dozen), scrapbooks, photographs, letters and such . . . well . . . unusual mementos as:

- A petition.

Typed on the stationery of the Pittsburgh Hilton, it is signed by 35 baseball writers and asks Stengel to stay on as manager of the New York Yankees, a team he had led through 12 seasons to 10 pennants and seven World Series titles.

It is dated Oct. 11, 1960--the day after his retirement was announced. The sportswriters knew they were losing the best source of quotes they would ever have.

“I’d like to do it,” Casey responded. “But I just don’t wanna.”

- A pair of rocking chairs.

One for Casey and one for his wife. They were 1972 Christmas presents (his “retirement” hadn’t lasted long) from the New York Mets, a National League expansion club that in its infancy was one of the most inept--and surely one of the best-loved--aggregations of athletes in sports history.

Under Stengel’s management, the club had somehow drawn record crowds despite its perennial last-place position.

“Been in this game a hundred years,” Stengel once groaned, “but I see new ways to lose ‘em I never knew existed before.”

- Plaques.

Like the one he got for managing the Oakland Oaks (in the old Pacific Coast League) to a pennant in 1948. Or the one presented him by his hometown of Glendale in 1952, when the municipal ball field in Verdugo Park was renamed “Stengel Field.”

He had lived in Glendale since his marriage to Edna in 1924 (her father was an early developer of that city) and returned there each year during the off-season to coach youngsters playing sandlot ball, to host elaborate parties, and finally to serve as a vice president of the bank that his wife’s family owned.

“I feel greatly honored to have a ballpark named after me,” he said the day Stengel Field was dedicated. “Especially since I’ve been thrown out of so many.”

- Telegrams.

One of them from the managing editor of the Aurora, Ill., Beacon News. Stengel had played for the Aurora club in the years before he signed his first major league contract, and now (in 1955) the editor wanted Stengel to appear at a dinner in his honor.

The telegram offered congratulations to “a guy whose head is the same size as when you left here more than 40 years ago” and was signed, “Your first newspaper booster.”

Can’t Be Arrogant

Did he go?

“Aw, well,” he said, “only an arrogant slob would turn down someone who don’t think you’re an arrogant slob.”

- Newspaper clippings.

Stengel would sit up half the night with newsmen, sipping bourbon and soda, embellishing his favorite yarns. He called the newsmen “my writers,” and seemed to like having them around.

Several of them crowded into a taxicab with him on one occasion, and the driver asked if they were players.

“No,” Stengel growled. “Even my players aren’t players.”

- Keys.

Not the kind that open locks, the kind that open cities: Keys to Boston, Glendale, Honolulu, Sacramento. And to the New York World’s Fair of 1964, presented to him a few months before Casey Stengel finally did retire--permanently--after 56 years in baseball.

“There comes a time in every man’s life--and I’ve had plenty of them.”

His Epitaph

Those were the words that ultimately marked his grave at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale.

“He didn’t live life like anyone else,” Lawson said of his late uncle. “He was the best. You don’t get to be the best by doing a little of this and a little of that. You have to focus. Casey did baseball.”

And what do you do with the remnants of such a life?

Lawson is still hopeful that some way can be found to keep the collection together.

He isn’t sure.

But--as always--there was a Casey Stengel quote to fit the case.

“I’ve heard it couldn’t be done,” he said. “But sometimes it doesn’t always work.”