You're Missin' a Great Game: From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back

Book by Herzog Whitey

CHAPTER ONE
Tra-la-la
I'll never forget the first spring training game in 1956, my rookie year. I had come up through the New York Yankee organization, and we were about to play the Dodgers in an exhibition down in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mickey Mantle got sick before the ballgame, and our manager, Casey Stengel, never one to do things the hard way, decided not to change the whole lineup around. He just crossed out Mickey's name and wrote mine in the third spot: H-E-R-Z-O-G. Now, I had no more business hitting third for the great New York Yankees than the hot-dog vendor in Section C, but I wasn't going to pull Mr. Stengel aside and say, "I don't know if I'm ready, Sir." He was a legend. The Yankees were a legend. It was one of those times you just sharpen up your spikes, take your best shot, and live with the consequences.
Well, Carl Erskine was pitching for the Dodgers that day, and he was known throughout baseball for a breaking ball that swooped down on you like a falcon on a chipmunk. In those days, they threw you the curve till you proved you could hit it -- which I can tell you flat-out, I hadn't -- so it didn't take a genius to know what was coming down the pipe. My first time up, Carl broke off a hammer on a 3-2 count -- snapped the damn thing right off -- and I took it for strike three. Never even moved the bat. Welcome to the big show.
Next time I come up, my ass is still a little red, and this time the bases are loaded and the game's on the line. And I'm getting ready to leave the dugout, swinging my two bats a little bit, when Stengel summons me over to him. For some reason I still don't understand, Casey was always singling me out for special instruction, and I still had no idea what to make of it, or him. "Hey, Doctor, c'mere a second," he says. He grabs me by the flannel and looks me in the eye, and I look up into that wrinkled old mug of his, and he says, "Just go up there and tra-la-laaaahhhh."
I don't know if I've heard him right. I say, "What?" He says, "Doctor, just go up there and tra-la-laaahhhh." And he walks away.
Now I'm standing there, a major-league game between the Yankees and the Dodgers on the line, and I'm thinking, What in the hell is this guy talkin' about? Am I in St. Pete or on Mars? I mean, the wheels are spinning fast. I'm picturing myself going up to home plate and dancing a jig, but that image goes kind of blurry. The game won't wait for you to figure it all out. So I just take my bat up there and dig in, and I'm back to my own thoughts: Bases loaded, okay, he got me with the hook last time. He's going to try to get ahead of me and spin me another one. And sure enough, I get behind in the count, and I'm sitting on the curveball, and here comes a big banana, bending downward, and my eyes light up. I swing hard and clean, and I'm telling you, I clocked it -- a line drive like I never hit before. A game-winner for sure.
Well, Charlie Neal's at second -- I'm left-handed, and I pulled it -- and he jumps up, spears the damn thing, and turns it into a double play. Inning's over!
In my game, a thin line divides the heroes from the screwups, and as I'm standing there in the batter's box, it ain't hard to figure out which side my ass is firmly planted on. I head back to the dugout, and there's Casey looking at me. He's got a little bit of a smile, almost like he's having himself one hell of a fine time, and he puts a big hand on my shoulder. I look into that creased-up face, and he says, "See what I told you, Doctor? Just tra-la-la." And he wanders off, shaking his head.
A great teacher leaves you to translate for yourself, and Casey, with that mumbo jumbo of his, sure fit that bill. At the moment, all I'm thinking about is that I damn near knocked in some runs and won the game, but now I've got this to chew on, too. As I'm trotting out to center field, still turning it over in my mind -- maybe it was then, maybe later; it's hard to know -- it comes to me. Sometimes it really is better just to go up there and relax. Swing easy, put it in play. It's what the big power hitters tell you: It's when they ain't trying for homers that the ball jumps out of the park. Just meet it and let something happen. Tra-la-la.
As time passed in my career, I realized Casey had left my mind full of nuggets like that: little ideas on fielding, hitting, approaches to baseball, every one of 'em essential to understanding it right and clean as a well-hit ball. It's still for bigger minds than mine to understand how a man can invent his own language, or why he might think to do it in the first place, but Casey did. And I finally figured out that spring that even though I had no idea what the hell he was talking about half the time, when Casey Stengel came up to me and started spewing that "Stengelese," he was offering me an education. I turned into a world-class translator, boy, and it's a good thing: If I hadn't been, my life would have turned out a whole lot different.
I first met Casey in 1955, when I came to the early camp with the Yankees that they used to call rookie school. I was a young centerfielder, and I was full of piss and vinegar and other nasty concoctions. The Yankees had given me a bigger signing bonus than they'd given that kid from Oklahoma, Mr. Mantle, and I figured that was about right. I had good speed and a strong bat, I knew the game, I was a hell of a handsome devil, and I knew I was bound to be a big-league ballplayer and a big shot or go broke trying. Yankee Stadium seemed like as good a place as any. Even though I grew up in a little Illinois town not forty miles from St. Louis -- the heart of Cardinals territory -- the Yanks had always been the team I dreamed about, the one I wanted to play for. I don't know if young players today have a clue how the very idea of Yankee Stadium, with its facade and monuments and history, used to mesmerize anybody who gave a damn about the game, but it did. That's me: only the best. Well, I'd taken the bus with a buddy of mine to Branson, Missouri in 1949 -- back then, they had a lot more trees than they had theaters -- and, after a tryout there, signed a minor-league contract. I got to rookie school six years later.
My first impressions of Casey were like a lot of other people's. He looked like maybe he'd just combed the straw out of his hair. His ears were so damn big that if they'd had jumbo jets back then, he'd have slowed 'em to a crawl. So much doubletalk flowed out of his craw you weren't sure his parents had raised him in English. That, plus the fact he later happened to manage some of the most talented teams ever assembled, still has people in baseball thinking Casey was some clown who fell asleep on a turnip truck and woke up one day in the Hall of Fame. How was I supposed to realize I was looking at the most intelligent man I'd ever know?
Casey ran that camp like an old schoolmaster, hammering away at the sport's little details that, as I learned, make the difference between winning and losing games, between a good club and a great one. Like the best teachers, he gave you the big picture in little doses, and he was flashing 'em to you all the time, like a good catcher with his signs. If you were smart and gave it enough thought, you learned them all and eventually saw how they fit together. That's the same as saying you learned baseball. I became a good manager in my time, and I hope a pretty good baseball man, and I can tell you right now that what Casey taught that spring, I used my entire career. I still do.
It was amazing how he talked to you. You're heading out to hit: "Butcher-boy, butcher-boy," he'd say. You're thinking, "What?" Well, he wants you to fake a bunt and chop it on the ground, see? Get it through the infield and get on base. Surprise 'em a little. Nobody'd ever used that term before. Or you're standing on second base in practice, minding your own business, maybe thinking just how wonderful it is that you got there in the first place, and suddenly he's behind you: "You're important to me, young fella; you're half a run." One day he comes up to me, jabs me with a finger and says, "I'm gonna tell you one thing; never worry about gettin' fired, 'cause if you don't own the ballclub or die on the job, it's gonna happen." He was talking about managing. I don't know why he picked me to say that to -- I was just a wiseass kid -- but when I took up that line of work myself years later, I never forgot those words. First of all, they were a kind of history lesson: Connie Mack had managed the Philadelphia Athletics for fifty years, a record that's going to stand forever. Why? The man owned the team. His job evaluations were pretty good. But more than that, Casey was right: You only control so much in this game, so why worry about it? Remembering that frees up your mind so you can do your job the right way.
Casey invented the whole idea of rookie school, just as he was the guy who invented the fall instructional leagues we have today. The Yankees would take their top prospects down to Florida for two weeks before the major-league camp opened, then invite some of them to stay on at the big camp. Rookie school. I'll never forget my first time there.
On the first day, Casey stood in front of us, leaning on a fungo bat, and explained what he tried to do as manager. He said it like this: "Mr. Lopez has a team over there in Cleveland that's pretty good" -- he was talking about Al Lopez, the Indians' manager, and they had a damn good team -- "and he's got them good pitchers over there, and I know they're gonna win 92 games. And I think about it, and I've got Mr. Raschi, Mr. Reynolds, and Mr. Page" -- he meant Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, and Joe Page, three of his outstanding pitchers -- "and I think that we can win 92 games. And now I've gotta figure out how I can win three more. And so I'm gonna hit this ball against that wall, and I'm going to teach you how to get it off the wall," and then how to do this and that other little thing that could win you those extra games. That's what he taught; he always said the other guy's team had the ability to win 92 games, and we've got the ability, so we've got to try and win three more. That was the approach he took.
And Casey broke it down into the hundred little things that would make the difference. He was going to have his team get from third to home faster than the other team by getting a better jump off third base. He was going to teach you how to take the proper lead off the bases -- not "the right way" or "the wrong way," but the Stengel way, the way he wanted it done -- so you'd have that little edge. He kept drilling you on those things and drilling you till you could practically do them in your sleep. Once I began coaching and managing, I kept passing them along to my own players, to everybody from the youngest rookie-league bush-whackers to the George Bretts, Ozzie Smiths, and Vince Colemans of the world. To this day, if I went by the park to watch my grandkids play and the coach asked me to help with their baserunning, I would show them Casey's way, how Casey wanted it done.
What he was showing you was that baseball, when it's played right, is made up of a lot of smaller plays, and each one gives you an edge if you work at it. It's also a game of large samples: Over 154 or 162 games, the little things accumulate and pile up and turn into big ones. That's the game's most essential fact. It's a game of percentages, and any way you can tilt the wheel your way a little, you do. Casey tilted it one degree here, another one there, till the ball just seemed to roll the Yankees' way and you looked up in August and saw New York right where they always seemed to be, at the top of the standings looking down. Writers and fans hardly ever notice these little things, and you hardly ever hear anybody mention 'em, but they decide championships. No good club ever won a thing without 'em.
Take baserunning. Today, people think of it in terms of stolen bases alone, but that's bull, and Casey understood that. He was passionate on the subject to the point of being a nut, and he taught it better than anybody I ever saw. Thinking ahead was part of it. He told you to check out the defense before you came to bat; instead of looking at the girls in the stands when you were on deck -- something ballplayers have always been tempted to do -- look at the outfielders. The leftfielder, for example. Does he throw left-handed? If he does, you've got an edge. If you hit it right down the line, you know he has to turn his back to the diamond to pick it up. To throw to second, he has to turn back around and come across his body with the ball. That gives you a little extra time, and it means if you hustle a little bit, you can turn a single into a double. Same thing if the rightfielder is right-handed. Play in and play out, the Yankees made hay out of situations like that. They could run the bases like nobody else -- not steal bases, run 'em -- and it added up to runs, and runs added up to leads, and leads added up to those three extra wins Casey wanted.
On defense, too, the little things counted. Say the Indians have a guy on first. Then let's say the next batter gets a base hit to right. Now: The rightfielder wants to come up throwing so he can hold that lead runner at second. That way, he'll keep a force play in effect. You or I would think in terms of which base to throw it to: Do I go to second or third? Well, Casey would say, "Never throw to the wrong base, keep the double play in order." But he took it a step further. On relay throws, he talked about which side of the fielder to throw it on. In his mind, it was easier for a fielder to move fifteen feet to his glove side (his left) than to move one foot to his right on a relay. That way, he could glove that ball out of the air, turn, and fire in one motion. But if it's to his throwing (right) side, he's got to reach across, catch it, and turn awkwardly across his body before he throws. A good runner takes advantage of that every time, and that might mean a run, an extended inning, a game. For the Yankees, Casey made it automatic: Never throw to a shortstop or second baseman's right. I'd never seen a manager take the time to explain it like that, and I never would again.
On the offensive side, Casey didn't just holler at you to score runs; he taught you how. During batting practice, after you'd hit, he made you stay on the bases when the next guy came up. He'd drill you on your jumps off the bag. As you know, when you're on third, if the batter puts it in the air, you can't leave till the ball is caught; on a grounder, you can take off right away. Casey pounded the difference into your head. On contact, you practiced your jump. Fly ball, back; ground ball, go! You did it again and again till you got so damn good at it you could watch the flight of the ball from the pitcher's hand and know before the hitter swung if it'd be on the ground or not. In games, if Casey had the "go" threat on, you scored. Years later, Gene Mauch, one of my American League managing rivals, asked me, "How come your teams get from third to home faster than anybody I ever saw?" I told him, "We work at it." I never told him how we worked at it. It ain't my fault he never went to camp with Casey.
I ended up in a lot of camps with good managers -- the Harry Crafts, the Charlie Dressens, the Paul Richards -- and no one else ever broke the game down the way Casey did. When I think back, it was like learning physics: The field is ruled by properties you can't see, but those properties make everything happen that you can see. Only the best teachers know the laws and have the sense to make them clear to the young and the brainless. In Casey, I had an Einstein.
History tells us Casey won 1,905 ballgames...