The Minor Leaguer

Casey played 100 games and hit .320 in Worcester in 1925, and was supposed to move with the club when Fuchs transferred the franchise to Providence for 1926. But the Giants, who had a working arrangement with Toledo, needed a manager there, and McGraw wanted Stengel. So Casey, as president, released himself as a player, fired himself as manager, and felt free to take the Toledo job. Judge Fuchs appealed to Judge Landis to return Stengel as Boston's property, and the commissioner was prepared to do that until Fuchs relented and said, "Okay, let him go."

Stengel managed Toledo for the next six years, continuing to play part time (for himself) through 1929.

Home was now Glendale, California, where Edna's family had real estate interests. Every year they'd spend the off-season there. In 1927, his roster loaded with former major leaguers, he won the pennant for the first time in Toledo's history, setting off a three-day civic celebration. However, minor league rosters change rapidly, and two years later the Mud Hens were last. The Stengels invested some of their money in the team, and it did get back to third place in 1930. But by now the Depression was in full swing, and when Toledo finished last again in 1931, the team went bankrupt.

Casey was out of work, and out his $40,000 investment.

A livelihood was not in question, since the California real estate activities were doing all right, but at forty-one, the only thing Casey knew how to do, or really cared about doing, was baseball. He went to the winter meetings looking for a job, any sort of job, and an odd sequence of events that had been building for years in Brooklyn provided him with one.

When Ebbets died, in 1925, control of the Dodgers had passed to two factions, each with 50 percent ownership. To avoid giving the presidency to either side, they made Robinson president. But as time went on, one side liked him, the other didn't. By 1929, the squabbling was so bad that the league had to step in to force a compromise in which Robinson would be no longer president but manager for two more years. Now, after the 1931 season, Uncle Robby was going into retirement at sixty-eight, and the new manager was Max Carey.

Stengel had played with Carey in Pittsburgh, long before Carey had been shipped off to the Dodgers because of the rebellion against McKechnie in 1926. Max approached Casey about being one of his coaches, and the Dodger ownership, remembering Casey's popularity in Brooklyn and eager to have any positive development to counteract the departure of good Ol' Uncle Robby, agreed.

So in 1932, Casey was back in the majors right where he had started, the community of Brooklyn with which his character had such a remarkable rapport.

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