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Show SPORT LIGHT . Casey Keeps Faith With His Team : By GRANTLAND RICE JiHERE WAS A moment late last March down In St. Petersburg, when Casey Stengel was staring moodily into space. He had sensed the fact that Joe DiMaggio would be out Indefinite- Casey has known enough team grief to sink two or three managers. But he has never shown any sign of losing faith in a club that has been the best in the league so far. Yankees Sans DiMaggio A day or two ago, I ran across a smart minor leaguer from other days. We began talking about the Yankees without DiMaggio. "This reminds me," he said, "of something that happened when I was playing ball. We had finished Grantland Rice ly perhaps for a summer. Lindell and Berra were both limping. Charlie Char-lie Keller was swinging without his old power. Yankee prospects were about as dark as the mouth of a railroad tunnel. "So far as run- me season Deiore in lourtn place. But at the, start of the next season we lost our only star. He had a broken leg and was out. So all the papers plastered us down in last place. 1 "So we got together. We talked things over. We finally decided that even though this lost player was good, he wasn't the entire club. We decided to go out and prove it. We fought and hustled harder than we ever did before. We moved into first place. The papers all said we wouldn't be there long not with our star missing. That made us hustle all the harder. I can tell you this if we'd had our star, we wouldn't have finished third. As it was, we won the pennant." nlng the team is concerned," Casey said, "nothing can happen. I can't be any big bust with my three coaches Bill Dickey, Dick-ey, Frank Crosetti and Jim Turner. Here are three great fellows who know their stuff. I know they are all for me. I've never seen three men work harder. They are the first on the field and they are the last to leave." Then Casey smiled. "It means a lot to any manager to have the help of such men," he said. "They don't make mistakes. I might but they won't." The fact Is that Casey has made fewer mistakes than any manager I know this season. He has had his team hustling and working overtime. Be has picked the right rookies. He has lost the tang his tongue once knew. He has been sympathetic sym-pathetic in place of sarcastic. He hasn't tried to be funny at any man's expense. He has been a member of his own squad, not an outsider. Stengel has done a fine job. And as he says, he has had the services ser-vices of one of the best coaching staffs baseball has ever known. Bill Dickey would be a helpful, soothing influence on any squad. Bill knows what it's all about and his advice is a big help. Frank Crosetti is one of the gamest in-fielders in-fielders the Yankees ever had. He was always a hustling ball player. He has been a big help. So has Jim Turner, a 20-game winner with the old Boston Braves. Turner has turned in his full share. So Stengel was right in pinning pin-ning a wild laurel blossom on each of his aids. It was a nice move by Stengel, a move other managers might not care to make. The old ballplayer continued to ramble on. "There's a good chance the Yankee ball club, subconsciously anyway, had gotten tired of hearing that Joe DiMaggio was the entire ball club. After all, there were Raschi, Forterfield, Byrne, Reynolds and other s there were Kryhoski and Phillips at first there were Coleman, Stirnweiss, Rizutto, Brown and Johnson. "There was and is a fellow named Tommy Henrich close to DiMaggio in everything there were Lindell, and Berra, Woodling and Bauer not even a Cobb or a Ruth could have been the entire ball club with all these fellows on hand. Most of them are first-class ball players. They must have felt the inside urge to show they could also play some baseball. "Here's another thing. As good as Joe DiMaggio and Tommy Hen-rich Hen-rich together are they were not as important as the pitchers. Connie Mack once told me that the pitchers pitch-ers were 70 per cent of any ball club. With or without DiMaggio, the Yankees had a fine pitching staff." |
