Casey at bat ...

Nobody in the history of elocution ever got more out of the spoken word than a weird and wonderful antiquarian named Casey Stengel.

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The New York Yankees invented him. He did his thing 154 times a season and won about 60 percent of the time. Though his grammar barely managed to escape arrest and the minor league teams he managed were notorious losers, Casey eventually lucked into a job with the Yankees and then laughed his way to the Hall of Fame.

If there was any question about Casey's readiness for the higher courts, he answered it in July of 1958 when he was invited to address the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee of the Judiciary--a title guaranteed never to achieve posterity.

Nobody in baseball was older, wiser, or funnier than Casey, and he had all his stuff going for him on his day in Washington, DC. He led off with 25 minutes of gibberish that enchanted his audience.

His opening pitch:

"I have to say at the present time, I think that baseball has advanced in this respect for the player help. This is an amazing statement for me to make, because you can retire with an annuity of 50 and what organization in America allows you to retire and receive money?"

After another 20 minutes of such elegant elocution, the dear old man of baseball was still in perfect shape for his smash ending:

"In closing, I'd like to tell you that I got a little concern yesterday in the first three innings when I say the three players I had gotten rid of and I said when I lost nine, what am I going to do, and when I had a couple of my players. I thought so great of that did not do so good up to the sixth inning. I was more confused, but I finally had to go and call on a young man in Baltimore that we don't own and the Yankees don't own and he is doing pretty good, and I would actually have to tell you that I think we are more the Greta Garbo now from success."

After all of the split infinitives were swept out of the hall, it was time to bring on the closing speaker, a famous intellectual named Mickey Mantle.

The Mick bounced over to the mike and, after a warm welcome from the audience, he went on to say:

"Thank you, Casey. I'd like you to know that my views on the situation are about the same as yours."

He smiled, waved a hand, and walked off the stage--to a sitting ovation.

THE PUPIL, TED WILLIAMS ...

Very few lovers of the art are aware of the last thing that the sweetest hitter in baseball, Ted Williams, had to say about his classic swing: "It's possible that it had an idiosyncrasy."

That's heresy, you say? Not really, not when the great man himself admits it and it is then repeated in a newspaper column by a friendly reporter.

When did all this happen? At the unveiling of Williams' statue at Fenway Park in Boston. His friend, the reporter, noticed Williams staring at the hands on the statue.

"Anything wrong?" asked the reporter.

"I don't know if it's wrong or even how it happened," was the Splendid Splinter's answer. "But it does appear that I shortened up my grip."

So what is the explanation? Did the sculptor make a glitch or was it something that Williams had picked up unknowingly? Who knows, but it could have gone back to Williams' beginnings in the Pacific Coast League.

As a minor leaguer, he spent a lot of his time with his manager, Lefty O'Doul, who might have been the greatest hitting master in the world. All the two ever talked about was hitting.

They even made up a set of rules for the hitters:

1. Don't use too heavy a bat.

2. Don't swing from the end of the bat.

3. With two strikes, don't try to pull the ball all the time.

4. Get a good pitch to hit.

The last piece of advice that Williams ever got from O'Doul was: "Kid, the best advice I can give you about hitting is never let anyone change you."

That hardly sounds like a person who would fool around with statutes or statues.

THE TEACHER, LEFTY O'DOUL ...

As a baseball fan in high school and college, we followed all of the local major league teams (Yankees, Giants, and Brooklyn Dodgers) and of course wound up with idols like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mel Ott, Carl Hubbell, etc.

Perhaps because Lefty O'Doul broke into baseball as a second-rate relief pitcher, we didn't pay him much attention when the Yankees picked him up in 1920. But we did wonder why a team like the Yankees would want a pitcher who couldn't get anyone out.

After a couple of seasons, O'Doul was returned to the PCL and it wasn't until 1928 that O'Doul, now 28, got lucky again.

The New York Giants' fabulous manager, John McGraw, had been watching O'Doul, not as a pitcher, but as a hitter. He intended to make O'Doul into an every-day outfielder and bat him third or fourth. O'Doul was 31 years old when he began getting his four turns at bat as a regular outfielder. He hit a very solid .316 for McGraw, who gave him a typical McGraw present--he traded him to the Phillies.

The Giants began thinking of suicide when O'Doul had one of the greatest pair of consecutive hitting years in baseball history: .398 in 1929 and .383 in 1930, with all kinds of extra-base hits, runs scored, runs-batted-in, and home runs.

It was incredible--and so were the Phillies when they rewarded him with a trade to the Dodgers. O'Doul hit .338 and .368 (1931-32), and then closed out his career by returning to the Giants and batting .315.

That, friends, is fantastic hitting. In fact, his .349 career batting average is the third best of all-time!

LORD GAVE US THE STRENGTH ...

Since we covered a lot of bases in the celebration of our 75th anniversary, we'd like to add one more bouquet for the part we played in strength-training's coming of age.

We remember the cavemen days as well. The term for it was weight lifting. Remember all those floor calisthenics, chinning bars, circus strongmen lifting horses, vaudevillians, juggling pianos, all designed to build mountains of bulbous muscle.

As the world moved on, all of this primordial stuff began disappearing and the magic called weight-training stepped up to the bar (bells), dumbbells, progressive-resistance exercises, and weight machines.

Machines? Enter a genius named Arthur Jones. We had never seen a weight-machine until Jones informed us that he was going to advertise his newly invented machines in every issue of Scholastic Coach.

Another pleasant surprise was a letter from two exercise physiologists from UCLA. They had devised a series of dumbbell exercises for their physical education classes, which they wanted to publish.

We did, of course, and have continued to publish such material in every issue since then.

Actually, the whole concept of modern weight training started with a confession from four college shot-putters--three from NYU and a national champion from Stanford named Otis Chandler (who went on to buy the Los Angeles Times and turn it into one of the two or three best newspapers in the world).

The shot-putters were making a joint statement: They had been training their bodies (sub rosa) with a progressive resistance program done with barbells. They called it weight training.

Why sub rosa? Because most track coaches forbade it. They believed it made you "muscle-bound."

The four athletes never believed it. They continued their workouts on the sly and it worked very successfully. They were now coming out of the closet to let everyone know the best way to work out with weights.

You can guess what happened. Probably every shot-putter in the world coming out of their closets to continue their training in fully equipped strength rooms.

Another major happening for us was an unsolicited contribution by our country's greatest discus thrower, Jay Silvester.

It was a copy of his survey on the use of anabolic steroids among the athletes in the 1972 Olympic Games. It was a sensational piece of work, but more than a little disheartening! Most of the athletes were taking steroids, and believed that it improved their performances.

We still remember our dismay at the news. If it's any consolation, however, there's no way the athletes would be so affirmative 35 years later.

Maybe the best thing that happened to us at the time was the quality of the two experts we hired for our strength column, Power Line.

Our first columnist was a college assistant coach named Dan Riley, who gave us five years before moving on to Penn State and then the pros--Washington Redskins, and, currently, Houston Texans.

Dan's successor, by unanimous vote, was another great young strength-training coach, Ken Mannie, who is our presiding guru. It was like having DiMaggio pinch-hit for Ted Williams, or vice versa.

They were, and still are, a Dream Team.