(7 of 7)
He can be the bush-league outfielder catching flies on his head, or Uncle Robbie catching that grapefruit. He can be the fading shortstop who can't go to his left any more—he will do a stiff-legged dance in the direction of an invisible ball; his face will break into naive wonderment as the phantom sphere whistles past. He thinks nothing of ruining a good suit of clothes to make his point. This summer, after the All-Star game in Milwaukee, he acted out that 1923, inside-the-park.
World Series homer. He waved his audience back, circled the bases by rounding the pillars in the Schroeder Hotel lobby, and then slid home beautifully on his stomach, skidding to a stop under the bar.
Maybe They Remember. By now, George Weiss is not alone in realizing that Casey is a good deal more than a clown.
This week, when Casey sends his team out after his sixth world championship, he knows it will not be easy. "Those fellas," says he, "they want to beat us. They never have. But I don't think their pitching is any better than ours. We beat their big fella [Don Newcombe] twice in the 1949 series. The first game it was 1-0 and Tommy Henrich hits one out of the park in the ninth inning. But that's what you need and I had DiMaggio and Keller and where do you find outfielders like that now? But we beat the fella [Newcombe], and we beat the other one [Carl Erskine] although he's a good pitcher.
"But let me tell you something. They don't roar around the bases like they used to. The first time I face Jackie Robinson, they tell me he steals home six times. I don't need anybody to tell me. It's in the papers, ain't it? So I watch him and I say: 'He ain't gonna steal on me.' I got me a play all set for him. So he gets on third base the first time and off he goes. He's already sitting back in the dugout when my fellas are trying to put my play in execution.
"These fellas [the Dodgers] haven't got the speed they had even two years ago when we played them last. And I'll tell you something: we won the World Series back in Vero Beach this spring when we polished them off 17-3. That scared 'em. That scared 'em so much they win 22 and lose only 2 to start the season. But I showed them some of my old power and maybe they remember."
There is no doubt that the Dodgers remember that fella [Stengel].
* To Casey, everyone is a fella; the listener supplies names at his own risk.