From mediocre to No. 2 in baseball
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
"All right, everybody line up alphabetically according to your height."
"Well, I made up my mind, but I made it up both ways."
"I'd always heard it couldn't be done, but sometimes it don't always work."
— Famous quotes attributed to the late Casey Stengel.
Understanding "Casey," the often unique tongue spoken by Hall of Fame baseball manager Casey Stengel, could sometimes be a formidable challenge to those around him.
But Wayne Graham, a well-traveled utility player on the 1964 New York Mets, had no trouble grasping the essence of Stengel's overheard words one day while dozing on a team flight.
Advertiser library photo • May 29, 1997
Legend has it that in the midst of a 53-109 season, Stengel wondered out loud to a group of assembled writers: "How do they expect me to win if they send me mediocre players like this Graham?"
Wayne Graham understood both the prudence and urgency of finding another line of work.
For a .127 hitter, who had bounced around the minor leagues for more than a decade before getting a 30-game nibble of the major leagues, the words proved as stirring as they were stinging.
At 27, Graham understood both the prudence and urgency of finding another line of work and, upon returning to school to finish his degree, took up coaching.
So, it is in no small way that the rest of the Western Athletic Conference has Stengel to blame for the mounting domination it has suffered for seven seasons now at the hands of the 65-year-old Graham and No. 2-ranked Rice University.
The team that the University of Hawai'i opens a three-game series with tonight at Les Murakami Stadium is but the heir to the longest string of supremacy WAC baseball has seen in its 40-year history.
Since finding themselves in the WAC after the demise of the Southwest Conference, the Owls have won 78 percent of their conference games, all six championships and gone to three College World Series.
Two statistics, a 13-game winning streak and the fact they have made just four errors in 17 games, suggest the Owls (16-1 overall, 3-0 WAC) aren't likely to yield their mastery any time soon.
Yet, until Graham arrived at the small, private university on Houston's stately south side, Rice had played baseball for 74 seasons and never been invited to an NCAA Tournament. But like his success on the high school (98-13) and junior college (530-102) levels, Graham has made the Owls a powerhouse.
As Casey might have said, "just because you make the Mets, doesn't mean you can't have a great career somewhere else."
