The Ol' Perfesser

Yogi Berra gets a lot of mileage with his seemingly innocent quips. But another baseball legend, longtime manager Casey Stengel, sometimes called the old Perfesser, surely had his moments too. 

During one game he went to the mound to remove his pitcher from a game in which the hurler was getting absolutely shelled. "I ain't tired, Case," the man complained.

"Yeah, but yer outfielders are," Stengel responded.

At the start of another baseball contest, his pitcher gave up three straight hits on his first three pitches of the game. Casey strolled out to the hill, beckoning the catcher to join him. "What kind of pitches this guy been throwin?" he inquired of the backstop.

"I don't know. I ain't caught one yet," the man replied, in brutal honesty.

When he was a player for Brooklyn in 1923, Casey found himself in Pittsburgh being heckled mercilessly by the local fans. He caught a sparrow between innings and put it under his cap. As he went to bat, the crowd renewed their harassment. Stengel doffed his hat, freeing the sparrow into the skies. Immediately the crowd cheered his humor.

When he was the Yankee manager, Stengel and star player Mickey Mantle were called to testify before Congress over antitrust laws. Stengel offered a long and rambling answer to a Congressman's question; it was such nonsense that nobody could fathom what he might possibly mean. Asked at the end of his manger's monologue what he thought, Mantle answered, "I agree with Casey."

Baseball has its characters more than any other sport, I think.

Yankee Pride

In my blog post yesterday I remarked on how hard it is to wear a Yankees cap. I have one; I buy a team cap when I visit that team's stadium, so when seeing Yankee Stadium I dutifully bought a Yankees cap. I've only worn it that one game day, however.

I posted the blog online, which prompted a Facebook friend (actually a real and honest friend in real and honest life!) remarked, "So you don't want to wear the cap from the best baseball team in history?" Though put forth in some humor (I assume) just as my post was meant to be a bit in jest, it's a good question. So today I'm going to answer the question and then thoroughly overanalyze that answer. It's what I do.

I love Yankee history. That is not snark on my part. The childlike attitude of Babe Ruth which comes though warts and all is fascinating; it makes him a real man, not a simple myth. Whose eyes don't well up at that famous 1948 picture of him the last time in uniform at old Yankee Stadium, weeks before he died? There will never be, in any sport, a Number 3 like him.

Lou Gehrig's stoic resolve in the face of terrible personal tragedy is more than admirable. It's a lesson in how to handle adversity. 

Then there's Yogi Berra. You gotta love him. He's Yogi! When you come to that fork in the road, take it!

The quiet confidence of Joe Dimaggio; the sheer talent of Mickey Mantle; Aaron Judge on the current squad is a monster. I mean that in a good way, seeing how he plays. Yet he maintains a certain humility which is laudable especially in this day and age of athletes waving their own flag (a disease which increasingly turns me from sports). I'm just acknowledging the tip of the iceberg here, that you get the point.

But then, well, they're the Yankees. They've been a powerhouse for most of their history. And that's where the ages old American rooting for the underdog affects the picture. It can be hard to cheer for a team (if you're not from New York, anyway) which so often appears to buy their championships. That's not entirely fair; particularly in years gone by you had to have a good staff to find talent. But that also requires money, which the Yanks always had plenty of. 

My point is there's the dichotomy of the rich versus the poor at work here. You see that in the musical Damn Yankees. It's a great musical by the way, which only uses Yankee dominance as a backdrop to a good moral lesson, a good human story. But it serves my purpose here.

Yankee fans will yell 'jealousy!' and rightly so, so far as it goes. At the end of the day, that's a lot of it. But again, Americans like underdogs. The Yankees aren't.

There's my overindulgent response. Yankee history brings chills. The Yankees as a team? Well, I'm a Detroit Tigers fan first, foremost, and always. Ya dance with the one that brought ya. That surely colors my judgment.