July 9, 1958—On Capitol Hill, New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel and his cleanup hitter, Mickey Mantle, testified before the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee concerning baseball’s antitrust exemption from monopoly laws.
For 45 minutes, the Bronx Bombers’ skipper offered his rapt but bemused interlocutors—and a nationwide audience—45 minutes of prime Stengelese. (Be patient while this audio loads.) The following is a typical example:
"I would say I would not know, but would say the reason why they would want it passed is to keep baseball going as the highest paid ball sport that has gone into baseball and from the baseball angle, I am not going to speak of any other sport."
Got that? Didn’t think so.
At the conclusion of this peerless contribution to the English language (not to mention jurisprudence), Mantle, with his best country-boy sense of timing, brought down the house with one cogent comment: "My views are just about the same as Casey's."
It always kills me, the way Congress picks sports and entertainment celebrities to show up on Capitol Hill. Whether it’s the Hollywood blacklist of the Forties and Fifties, the farm troubles of the 1950s, or steroids a few years ago, I think the 100 gentlemen and gentlewomen of our nation’s greatest deliberative body could care less about the particular issues that keep Bud Selig or George Lucas up at night.
What they’re really interested in are the cameras, which, Senators figure, are bound to find them after inevitably moving past whoever the flavor of the month is out there for the media. Don’t you find the persistence of Senatorial narcissism from 1789 to the present to be deeply reassuring that the republic continues? I sure do. In the end, it’s not about their constituents or even their witnesses. It’s all about them. Charming.
If the Powers That Be really wanted to know how the baseball or film worlds really worked, they’d start with a clubhouse trainer or a gaffer, then work their way up to, say, Brian Cashman or Jeffrey Katzenberg—someone who’s pale from hanging around the inside of their establishments, working the phone, follicularly challenged because they’ve been pulling their hair out to make sure everything goes off like clockwork. The Senate investigators wouldn’t go for the glamour boys.
Really, there’s no discernible reason why Stengel should have had to appear—his expertise was on the diamond, not in any Senate chamber. The need to drag Mantle into the whole thing was even more tenuous—all he wanted was to have a contract shoved over on a table for his signature every year or so he could return to the batting cage and hit those tape-measure, Bunyanesque homers.
None of this is to say, however, that Stengel didn’t know something. And I’m not referring here to instructional camps he instituted for the Bronx Bombers in the early 1950s, the platoon system that worked to perfection, or the way he caught lightning in a bottle with hungry youngsters like Billy Martin, his surrogate son.
I’m not even talking about the fast summary in numbers about his decade up to that point with the Yankees: Eight pennants and six world championships over the last nine years
No, I’m saying that Casey possessed a foxiness beneath that language-torturing exterior. In fact, that exterior didn’t function as a contradiction of folksiness, but as part and parcel of his shrewdness. He belonged to the “if you can’t dazzle ‘em, baffle ‘em” school of communication.
For 45 minutes, the Bronx Bombers’ skipper offered his rapt but bemused interlocutors—and a nationwide audience—45 minutes of prime Stengelese. (Be patient while this audio loads.) The following is a typical example:
"I would say I would not know, but would say the reason why they would want it passed is to keep baseball going as the highest paid ball sport that has gone into baseball and from the baseball angle, I am not going to speak of any other sport."
Got that? Didn’t think so.
At the conclusion of this peerless contribution to the English language (not to mention jurisprudence), Mantle, with his best country-boy sense of timing, brought down the house with one cogent comment: "My views are just about the same as Casey's."
It always kills me, the way Congress picks sports and entertainment celebrities to show up on Capitol Hill. Whether it’s the Hollywood blacklist of the Forties and Fifties, the farm troubles of the 1950s, or steroids a few years ago, I think the 100 gentlemen and gentlewomen of our nation’s greatest deliberative body could care less about the particular issues that keep Bud Selig or George Lucas up at night.
What they’re really interested in are the cameras, which, Senators figure, are bound to find them after inevitably moving past whoever the flavor of the month is out there for the media. Don’t you find the persistence of Senatorial narcissism from 1789 to the present to be deeply reassuring that the republic continues? I sure do. In the end, it’s not about their constituents or even their witnesses. It’s all about them. Charming.
If the Powers That Be really wanted to know how the baseball or film worlds really worked, they’d start with a clubhouse trainer or a gaffer, then work their way up to, say, Brian Cashman or Jeffrey Katzenberg—someone who’s pale from hanging around the inside of their establishments, working the phone, follicularly challenged because they’ve been pulling their hair out to make sure everything goes off like clockwork. The Senate investigators wouldn’t go for the glamour boys.
Really, there’s no discernible reason why Stengel should have had to appear—his expertise was on the diamond, not in any Senate chamber. The need to drag Mantle into the whole thing was even more tenuous—all he wanted was to have a contract shoved over on a table for his signature every year or so he could return to the batting cage and hit those tape-measure, Bunyanesque homers.
None of this is to say, however, that Stengel didn’t know something. And I’m not referring here to instructional camps he instituted for the Bronx Bombers in the early 1950s, the platoon system that worked to perfection, or the way he caught lightning in a bottle with hungry youngsters like Billy Martin, his surrogate son.
I’m not even talking about the fast summary in numbers about his decade up to that point with the Yankees: Eight pennants and six world championships over the last nine years
No, I’m saying that Casey possessed a foxiness beneath that language-torturing exterior. In fact, that exterior didn’t function as a contradiction of folksiness, but as part and parcel of his shrewdness. He belonged to the “if you can’t dazzle ‘em, baffle ‘em” school of communication.
(I’m amazed, by the way, how many media studies students, after thousands of dollars, countless hours, and even advanced degrees, never fail to learn this most vital of lessons.)
And nowhere did he apply this skill to better effect than before Congress.
Whether Casey agreed with the necessity of a reserve clause or not, almost any honest answer could have gotten him in trouble with somebody.
If he really did have his gripes with that system of involuntary servitude, saying it in front of millions was not the way to go—it would only give the Yankee brass (then as now, a notoriously unsentimental lot) a chance to hand him his head.
Even if he liked the idea and said so, that might enable a cagy Senate committee investigator to entice him to spill some sort of anecdote that would demonstrate just how bad it could be.
Dangerous territory all around. Unless, that is, he put on one of those MGM musical numbers. You know: “Be a Clown.” His audience would be too busy laughing to ask hard follow-up questions.
That foolproof method of media management was also employed by another ‘50s master of his realm: Dwight D. Eisenhower. At the time, the political cognoscenti couldn’t be more condescending about him. Somehow they forgot about his wise, effective leadership of U.S. forces in World War II. Instead, they focused on his addresses—especially those impromptu press conferences when a pack of reporters get to play Gotcha.
Almost invariably in these settings, Ike came off like a guy brainwashed after a month-long Rotary Club convention, as can be seen in the hilarious parody of “Eisenhowerese” penned only the year before Stengel’s Capitol Hill appearance by American Heritage editor Oliver Jensen. It imagines what the Gettysburg Address might have sounded like in the hands of a later, less eloquent Republican. Yes, Ike.
Only one thing: Just about all that extra verbiage was an act.
As I mentioned in a prior blog posting, if you were lucky enough to sit in on a Columbia University class addressed by that institution’s president (as well as the future leader of the free world), you’d hear the clearest, most succinct overview of military strategy through the ages that you could ever imagine.
It took nearly a decade after Ike left office before journalists and historians began to notice that the former President’s big smile, wrestling with dependent clauses, and seeming cluelessness disguised a politician of unusual skill and cunning. Liberal columnist Murray Kempton picked up on it first, followed by Garry Wills in Nixon Agonistes. Speaking with staffers privately after one of his press encounters, Eisenhower was especially gleeful that he had said nothing of major consequence.
Both Eisenhower and Stengel left their respective positions after campaigns in 1960, neither by choice. Stengel was fired by Yankee management for a) losing the World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and b) being, at age 70, too old. Eisenhower left because the 22nd Amendment prevented him from seeking a third term (though it is likely that heart disease in office would have raised enough alarms with him).
Just remember: In their way, both men used language as craftily as The Bard.
And nowhere did he apply this skill to better effect than before Congress.
Whether Casey agreed with the necessity of a reserve clause or not, almost any honest answer could have gotten him in trouble with somebody.
If he really did have his gripes with that system of involuntary servitude, saying it in front of millions was not the way to go—it would only give the Yankee brass (then as now, a notoriously unsentimental lot) a chance to hand him his head.
Even if he liked the idea and said so, that might enable a cagy Senate committee investigator to entice him to spill some sort of anecdote that would demonstrate just how bad it could be.
Dangerous territory all around. Unless, that is, he put on one of those MGM musical numbers. You know: “Be a Clown.” His audience would be too busy laughing to ask hard follow-up questions.
That foolproof method of media management was also employed by another ‘50s master of his realm: Dwight D. Eisenhower. At the time, the political cognoscenti couldn’t be more condescending about him. Somehow they forgot about his wise, effective leadership of U.S. forces in World War II. Instead, they focused on his addresses—especially those impromptu press conferences when a pack of reporters get to play Gotcha.
Almost invariably in these settings, Ike came off like a guy brainwashed after a month-long Rotary Club convention, as can be seen in the hilarious parody of “Eisenhowerese” penned only the year before Stengel’s Capitol Hill appearance by American Heritage editor Oliver Jensen. It imagines what the Gettysburg Address might have sounded like in the hands of a later, less eloquent Republican. Yes, Ike.
Only one thing: Just about all that extra verbiage was an act.
As I mentioned in a prior blog posting, if you were lucky enough to sit in on a Columbia University class addressed by that institution’s president (as well as the future leader of the free world), you’d hear the clearest, most succinct overview of military strategy through the ages that you could ever imagine.
It took nearly a decade after Ike left office before journalists and historians began to notice that the former President’s big smile, wrestling with dependent clauses, and seeming cluelessness disguised a politician of unusual skill and cunning. Liberal columnist Murray Kempton picked up on it first, followed by Garry Wills in Nixon Agonistes. Speaking with staffers privately after one of his press encounters, Eisenhower was especially gleeful that he had said nothing of major consequence.
Both Eisenhower and Stengel left their respective positions after campaigns in 1960, neither by choice. Stengel was fired by Yankee management for a) losing the World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and b) being, at age 70, too old. Eisenhower left because the 22nd Amendment prevented him from seeking a third term (though it is likely that heart disease in office would have raised enough alarms with him).
Just remember: In their way, both men used language as craftily as The Bard.
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