Casey Stengel named best manager in NY baseball history

MSG's "The Lineup" concluded Tuesday with Casey Stengel being named the manager of the New York all-star squad.

No problem there. Or with Leo Durocher, John McGraw and Joe Torre being finalists. But Billy Martin over Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy? Really? I think not.

Anyway, here are some quotes from the show:

Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau, on Stengel managing bad teams before his time with the Yankees: “He got hit by a cab once in Boston and had to miss a bunch of games, and they (the fans) voted the cab driver as the guy who had done the most for Boston baseball that year.”

Willie Randolph on Torre: “No one did it better, really. He was just the consummate leader, communicator, just a very strong personality, but in a calm way.”

Burt Sugar on McGraw: "In 1932 he resigns, after all those years – from 1903 on – and that’s the day that Lou Gehrig becomes the first man in American League history to hit four homers in a game, and Gehrig is not even mentioned on many of the sports pages because the news was John McGraw retired.”

Ralph Branca on Durocher: “Leo was a very good manager; he played the game like a chess game. I’d listen to him in the dugout, ‘If I do this, they’ll do that,’ and he might plot seven moves before he made a move.”

Sparky Lyle on Martin: “It didn’t matter how you lost a game, but it was just the fact that you lost…I mean he was just as mad as he could be every single time.”

The 11 men in "The Lineup" include eight primarily known for their work with the Yankees, two Giants and one Dodger. (Willie Mays and Stengel did spend some time with the Mets, but only when they were well past their primes.)

Here is the list:

C: Yogi Berra

1B: Lou Gehrig

2B: Jackie Robinson

3B: Alex Rodriguez

SS: Derek Jeter

LF: Dave Winfield

RF: Babe Ruth

CF: Willie Mays

SP: Christy Mathewson

RP: Mariano Rivera

MGR: Casey Stengel