Mickey Mantle, one of baseball's greatest

It is the birthday of baseball legend Mickey Mantle (1931), one of the greatest players of all time. He was the finest switch hitter in the game. He hit a record 18 home runs in the World Series. His other records included 40 RBIs, 42 runs, 43 walks, 26 extra-base hits, and 123 total bases. In 1956, he won the Triple Crown, with record home runs, runs batted in, and batting average. He played center field and first base for the New York Yankees for 18 seasons, ending in 1968.

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).