Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character

The definitive biography of Casey Stengel, baseball’s greatest character

There was nobody like Casey before him, and no one like him since. For more than fifty years, Casey Stengel lived baseball, first as a player (he was the only person in history to play for all the New York teams—the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, and Mets), and then as a manager (for the Yankees and Mets, among others). He made his biggest mark on the game, revolutionizing the role of manager while winning an astounding ten pennants and seven World Series Championships (including FIVE STRAIGHT!) with the Yankees. Playing with and against a Who’s Who of Cooperstown—Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb—and forming indelible, and sometimes complicated, relationships with Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Billy Martin, Casey Stengel was, for an astonishing five decades, the undisputed, hilarious, and beloved face of baseball.
     For a man who spent so much of his life in the limelight, he still remains an enigma. New York Times bestselling author Marty Appel paints an intimate portrait of a private man who was larger than life and remains the embodiment of the national pastime.