Casey Stengel managed Yankees, Mets

It is the birthday of Baseball Hall of Famer Casey Stengel (1890), who played outfield early in his career and then managed several teams, but most famously the New York Yankees and the expansion New York Mets. He was manager of the Mets in 1962 when the team made St. Petersburg its spring training town. The field where the team practiced at Crescent Lake Park is named Huggins-Stengel Field for him and 1920s Yankees manager Miller Huggins. Stengel also managed the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1930s and the Boston Braves until 1943. Casey was a nickname. (He was born Charles Dillon Stengel.) It was originally KC for Kansas City, where he was born, but with the popular baseball poem Casey at the Bat it became Casey. He also was called The Old Perfessor for his penchant for talking baseball at length at the slightest provocation. Stengel was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. His autobiography is Casey at the Bat: The Story of My Life in Baseball (1962).