Game Rewind: 04.24.1965
It should have been a night on celebration and pomp and circumstance. Instead, Casey Stengel’s 3,000th win was forgotten — literally.
On April 24, 1965, Casey Stengel’s New York Mets beat the San Francisco Giants 7-6 at Candlestick Park.
The win marked the 3,000th managerial victory of Stengel’s amazing baseball career. But, even if by chance you were one of the 14,702 in attendance to witness the moment, you’d have never known it. No one knew it — at that moment.
But three days later on a team flight from San Francisco to Houston, a Mets statistician got curious and began digging through baseball records, adding up Stengel’s career wins.
Stengel won 208 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 373 with Boston Braves, 1,495 (and 37 World Series wins) with the New York Yankees and, by this point in his career, roughly 150 as manager of the New York Mets. An additional 1,063 wins were recorded between five minor league teams, that started in Worcester, Massachusetts.
When the numbers were all tallied, and the plane taxied into Houston a few hours later it was official: Casey Stengel recorded his 3,000th win as a manager three days earlier.
The New York Times later reported:
The oversight was understandable. Too much had been going on. For a few hours on Sunday morning the Mets actually tasted the first division for the first time … Not merely winning, but the style and circumstance, has transported the Mets. If the rest of them is out there among the earth satellites, Stengel himself is out there even further in some parabolic orbit, headed for Mars and beyond.
The Mets would go on to lose their next six straight, falling back to Earth with a big thud. Three months later, the team was mired in last place and Stengel suffered a pair of falls, injuring his wrist and hip. He retired in July.