(From funnynamesblog.com)
Over at The Blog of Funny Names, I wrote my monthly offering about the first man to manage the first sports team I ever fell in love with.
That would be Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel, a 71-year-old who cut a quite curious and funny figure for a 4-year-old figuring out the world.
So my story there begins …
Watching the New York Mets on a bulky console black-and-white TV and hearing a curious old guy make men thrusting microphones into his face laugh by the way he mangled our language is one of my earliest and fondest memories.
The sly-as-a-fox bumpkin was one Charles Dillon Stengel. Announcers Ralph Kiner, Lindsay Nelson and Bob Murphy just called him Casey, and with great reverence. Because I was born in the cold December of 1957 and those Mets who had made a 71-year-old man their first-ever manager were christened in the cool spring breezes of 1962, that moniker was a funny name to me, bringing to mind train engineers and poetic ball-swatting players at the bat, with waxed mustaches of yesteryear. Yes, I was an imaginative little kid. What can I say? Besides letting me watch baseball past my bedtime on that shotgun apartment living room TV in Brooklyn, N.Y., my young parents read to their first child a lot, too.
Did somebody mention trains? One of Casey’s catchers on those Mets was named Clarence “Choo Choo” Coleman.
Click here to read the rest over at The Blog of Funny Names.
Mark Bialczak 
Casey Stengel? Choo Choo Coleman? That’s hilarious! I can see why your little four and a half year old self thought of trains, my friend!
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I was on the right track to become a Mets fan for life, Rachel. 🙂
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LOL! Track, I love it!
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I like the way your parents think, Mark. Baseball and books…a great motto! Choo choo Colemen. Nice!
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I know, my parents were so cool when I was a tyke because when they they had me, my mom was 19 and my dad 20. We used to say that we grew up together, Aud. 🙂
Wasn’t Choo Choo Coleman fantastic for a little kid to learn about baseball?
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I once had a shop teacher named Harry Kirshner.
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Maybe Dave, the brains and boss behind The Blog of Funny Names, should recruit you to come aboard, Marissa. That’s a good one! Harry “Drill Press Not Rock Concert” Kirschner. 🙂
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I’ll have to try to make my presence known.
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Where in Brooklyn? You’ve packed a lot of flavor into a few short paragraphs.
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Greenpoint, Brooklyn. My first place in life was in the shadow of the Kosciuscko Bridge, Mark.
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Oh yeah…I think we’ve walked down this rabbit hole once before. It lead to a discussion of the pronunciation of your name, if I remember correctly.
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Yes, indeed it did, and your mention of your ancestry as well.
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