GUILFORD, Conn. — The magazine was slipped across the kitchen table. Ken MacKenzie picked it up and stared at it smiling and chuckling.
“We thought he was an old man,” MacKenzie said as craggy Casey Stengel stared back from the cover of the Sports Illustrated dated March 5, 1962. “Casey knew what was going on. There were no flies on Casey.”
Sixty years ago this week, MacKenzie reported to St. Petersburg, Fla., for spring training, the first ever for the new National League franchise in New York. Stengel, lured out of retirement to manage a collection of cast-offs, has-beens and never-to-be noteworthy ballplayers, lifted his bat and pointed to first base. The Mets’ pitchers and catchers followed.
