The Futility Infielder

On Thursday I took Baseball Prospectus/Pinstriped Bible author Steven Goldman up on an offer to trek to the Brooklyn Public Library in search of photos to augment his forthcoming biography of Casey Stengel, Forging Genius (due in October from Brassey's). Focused as the book is on Casey’s career before he made routine work of winning pennants as Yankee manager, Steven was looking for photos of Stengel’s time with the Dodgers either as a player (1912-17) or a sub-.500 manager (1934-36) -- Dem Bums, indeed. He'd been led to believe the library had stacks and stacks of old Dodger photos on file, and anticipating both the need for assistance and my own glee at sifting through such arcana, he invited me along.

Also accompanying him was Andrew Baharlias, the former staff counsel of the Yankees (1997-2002), whom you may recognize from a few articles on Baseball Prospectus, most recently one on what he termed the Yankees Defensive Employee Retention Program. Through some miraculous luck on a three-train odyssey, I arrived at the library on time, only to find that Steven and Andrew were two rivers away, still stuck in traffic entering the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey side. I took the opportunity to avail myself of some mediocre Chinese food while soaking up the gorgeous sunshine on the fringe of Prospect Park, checking out the war memorials at Grand Army Plaza as I awaited their arrival. Hey, it beats working.

Once they arrived, it quickly became apparent that the three of us were swatting flies with a sledgehammer. The librarian handed Steven only about a dozen manila folders, many containing only one or two photos, a stack hardly as thick as a dime-store novel. Even after poring over the binder listing every potential folder, we came up with only about two dozen files which seemed relevant. Donning white cloth gloves so as not to mar the photos with our fingerprints, we spent about an hour carefully examining each shot, reading captions on the back and laughing at some of the more outrageous pictures: Dodger manager Wilbert Robinson, "Uncle Robbie," riding a bicycle, Giant manager John McGraw and his wife, who looked exactly like him (not a compliment), a young Yogi Berra with a basketball, a great shot of some not-so-tough-looking Brooklyn schoolkids burning Casey in effigy during the 1952 World Series, one holding up a sign that said "Casey Stinky Stengel." Hoodlums!

Steven rejected many photos for being outside the time period, several with players wearing the wrong uniforms (Van Lingle Mungo as a Giant just doesn't cut it). In all we only came up with about seven as relevant to the book: Dazzy Vance, the great Brooklyn hurler of the Twenties, the aforementioned Uncle Robbie bike shot, a good one of Yankee manager Joe McCarthy with owner Edward Barrow and another of Barrow with Larry McPhail and George Weiss, a shot of Max Carey and Bill Terry, and so on. Hardly the bonanza we'd envisioned. Still, it was a fun exercise, perhaps moreso for me since I didn't have to cross state lines, nor did I have anything at stake other than an opportunity to pick Steven's brain a bit and hear a few of Andrew's war stories from his time with the Yanks.

Since the photos in question, mostly from the defunct Brooklyn Eagle, aren't online, for today’s Lunchtime Link, I'll leave you with a shot that is. It's one of my all-time favorite baseball photos from another source, the Library of Congress: Casey as a Dodger circa 1915, wearing a pinstriped uniform and sunglasses, looking like one cool mofo standing in the Ebbets Field outfield (the shot was also recently used in the SABR publication Deadball Stars of the National League). Casey's mouth is open like he’s carrying on some long monologue in Stengelese, and if you’re like me you'd willingly shell out a pretty penny to hear those thoughts.