The Outcast

Sitting in Glendale, Stengel could not turn off his restless mind. His ideas about managing a ball club, taken entirely and consciously from McGraw, had been refined by experience, even though that experience had no "you could took it up" success to point to. He knew exactly how he wanted to run a club and what he thought would work. The only trouble was that he had no place to apply his painstakingly accumulated skill. The jokes and double talk served their purpose: one of the things he had noted about McGraw was the old man's cultivation of the press. McGraw had always made friends with beat writers and columnists and used publicity for his purposes. He fought and argued with those who disagreed, but he always made up quickly. McGraw considered propaganda one of his important weapons, in controlling players and in conflicts with ownership, and was constantly giving parties and dinners for the journalists who could rely on him to make news. Younger writers, especially, tended to idolize him (since he was famous when they arrived) until some incident flared up to hurt somebody's feelings. What Stengel saw, however, better than his contemporaries, was that dealing with the press was a basic feature of a manager's job, a responsibility to his club from a promotional standpoint, and capable of helping or hurting his players and results on the field.

He also appreciated McGraw's mental flexibility in changing from dead-ball baseball to lively-ball baseball. Stengel himself, after all, had made the majors as a singles hitter and base stealer, before the lively ball arrived. But he understood that you had to play differently when power became available; problem was, he never had enough of it on the clubs he managed.

Stengel identified with McGraw's unrelentingly competitive spirit, readiness to fight, and verbal aggressiveness, because he was that way himself. Yet he was, essentially, a softer person, loving argument more for its own sake than as a way to exert dominance. He fought for the fun of it, not with anger, as McGraw did. So in Stengel, the desire for control took the form of wanting to teach and impart special knowledge rather than to issue orders like a commanding general.

Finally, he understood the value of McGraw's intuitive responses and willingness to gamble. You had to know the book, of course, inside out, to always be aware of what percentage was in your favor. But you also had to feel -- feel, not "know" -- when to go against the book and not worry about the consequences. The percentages would see to it that you won as much as you should if you followed them; but to win more than you should, you had to be able to go beyond them.

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