Top 100 Casey Stengel Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It’s easy to get good players. Getting them to play together, that’s the hard part.”

— Casey Stengel

2. “The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.”

— Casey Stengel

3. “I’ll never make the mistake of being 70 again.”

— Casey Stengel

4. “Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.”

— Casey Stengel

5. “There comes a time in every man’s life, and I’ve had plenty of them.”

— Casey Stengel

6. “The only thing worse than a Mets game is a Mets doubleheader.”

— Casey Stengel

7. “The trick is growing up without growing old.”

— Casey Stengel

8. “The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.”

— Casey Stengel

9. “Play every game as if your job depended on it. It just might.”

— Casey Stengel

10. “You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, ‘Can’t anybody here play this game?’ There comes a time in every man’s life and I’ve had plenty of them.”

— Casey Stengel

11. “Most ball games are lost, not won.”

— Casey Stengel

12. “Well, that’s baseball. Rags to riches one day and riches to rags the next. But I’ve been in it 36 years and I’m used to it.”

— Casey Stengel

13. “Don’t cut my throat, I may want to do that later myself.”

— Casey Stengel

14. “A lot of people my age are dead and you could look it up.”

— Casey Stengel

15. “You could look it up.”

— Casey Stengel

16. “I made up my mind, but I made it up both ways.”

— Casey Stengel

17. “See that fella over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years, he’s got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he’s 20 years old, too. In 10 years he’s got a chance to be 30.”

— Casey Stengel

18. “Never wear a backward baseball cap to an interview unless applying for the job of umpire.”

— Casey Stengel

19. “They say it can’t be done, but sometimes that doesn’t always work.”

— Casey Stengel

20. “Without losers, where would the winners be?”

— Casey Stengel

21. “The Mets are gonna be amazing.”

— Casey Stengel

22. “We was going to get you a birthday cake, but we figured you’d drop it.”

— Casey Stengel

23. “You have to draft a catcher, because if you don’t have one, the pitch will roll all the way back to the screen.”

— Casey Stengel

24. “You have to go broke three times to learn how to make a living.”

— Casey Stengel

25. “Son, it ain’t the water cooler that’s striking you out.”

— Casey Stengel

26. “The Yankees don’t pay me to win every day, just two out of three.”

— Casey Stengel

27. “Never make bad predictions, especially about the futture.”

— Casey Stengel

28. “Mr. that boy couldn’t hit the ground if he fell out of an airplane.”

— Casey Stengel

29. “Been in this game one-hundred years, but I see new ways to lose ’em I never knew existed before.”

— Casey Stengel

30. “I feel greatly honored to have a ballpark named after me, especially since I’ve been thrown out of so many.”

— Casey Stengel

31. “I came in here and a fella asked me to have a drink. I said I don’t drink. Then another fella said hear you and Joe DiMaggio aren’t speaking and I said I’ll take that drink.”

— Casey Stengel

32. “I love signing autographs. I’ll sign anything but veal cutlets. My ballpoint slips on veal cutlets.”

— Casey Stengel

33. “After a deplorable day afield, when asked by a reporter what he thought of his team’s execution.”

— Casey Stengel

34. “I couldn’t have done it without my players.”

— Casey Stengel

35. “All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.”

— Casey Stengel

36. “Some of you fellers are getting ‘Whiskey Slick.’”

— Casey Stengel

37. “Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It’s staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.”

— Casey Stengel

38. “I never saw anyone like Ty Cobb. No one even close to him as the greatest all-time ballplayer. That guy was superhuman, amazing.”

— Casey Stengel

39. “I got one that can throw but can’t catch, and one that can catch but can’t throw, and one who can hit but can’t do either.”

— Casey Stengel

40. “The Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I even knew existed.”

— Casey Stengel

41. “Nobody knows this, but one of us has just been traded to Kansas City.”

— Casey Stengel

42. “Managing is getting paid for home runs that someone else hits.”

— Casey Stengel

43. “If you walk backwards, you’ll find out you can go forwards and people won’t know if you’re coming or going.”

— Casey Stengel

44. “Jerry Lumpe looks like the best hitter in the world until you put him in the lineup.”

— Casey Stengel

45. “Son, we’d like to keep you around this season but we’re going to try and win a pennant.”

— Casey Stengel

46. “The trouble with women umpires is that I couldn’t argue with one. I’d put my arms around her and give her a little kiss.”

— Casey Stengel

47. “Now there’s three things you can do in a baseball game: You can win or you can lose or it can rain.”

— Casey Stengel

48. “They say Yogi Berra is funny. Well, he has a lovely wife and family, a beautiful home, money in the bank, and he plays golf with millionaires. What’s funny about that?”

— Casey Stengel

49. “We’ve got to learn how to stay out of triple plays.”

— Casey Stengel

50. “Oldtimers, weekends, and airplane landings are alike. If you can walk away from them, they’re successful.”

— Casey Stengel