Closer Look At The Mayor

By request, here is a bunch more background information on the newest Sox signee, Sean Casey. I might as well go ahead and name him my Baseball Boyfriend of the Day, because it’s basically impossible to find anyone who has anything bad at all to say about him.

Boston Globe – July 13, 2005: Reds star steps in with local priest to fight hunger in Lawrence

A communications major in college, Casey makes Kevin Millar of the Sox look bashful by comparison. His nickname on the Reds is the ”Mayor,” because he has a word for everybody, including sportswriters, whom he stunned one spring at the Reds training facility in Sarasota, Fla., when he sauntered into the press room, introduced himself and welcomed them, all before even saying hello to his teammates.

The San Diego Union-Tribune once surveyed the Padres on which first baseman was the league’s chattiest. Casey won going away. ”Casey takes it to a different level,” Padres infielder Phil Nevin said at the time. ”He’s like that guy in ‘Seinfeld,’ the close-to-your-face talker. You think Casey is going to lick your face.”

Cappetta laughs when describing Casey’s exuberance. ”Sean’s an awesome guy,” he said. ”An incredible extrovert, but very humble. He’s definitely got his feet grounded.”

San Diego Union-Tribune – October 13, 2006: It’s a wonderful life for others when they meet Sean Casey

Detroit’s first baseman is the boy scout who outgrew his uniform, but not his pledge. He is baseball’s best Samaritan, a genuine, honest-to-goodness, real-life George Bailey, only with much better bat speed.

He is the first ballplayer you would pick if you were selecting a son.

Sean Casey is one of those individuals who restore your faith in humanity and force you to confront your own failings. He is a .302 lifetime hitter who is hitting .333 in his first World Series, but his batting average is the least of his assets. Casey is virtue without sanctimony, charity without calculation. When we both worked in Cincinnati, I learned to limit my Casey columns so as to avoid fawning over him.

“He is the absolute best, he really is,” Reds publicity director Rob Butcher said yesterday. “There probably isn’t a more sincere person on the face of the earth. Of all the guys I’ve ever had, Sean’s the most difficult for me to deal with because people ask him to do everything and they expect him to do everything. He’s concerned about hurting people’s feelings. He hates telling people no.”

My favorite is a July 15, 2007 article in the Detroit Free Press, which isn’t online, so I’ve quoted it here in its entirety:

CHATTY CAT: Tigers’ Casey plays, talks good game

BY SHAWN WINDSOR

Most major league first basemen offer at least some kind of greeting when opposing batters reach first. Then there is the Tigers’ Sean Casey, a soft-handed, gap-hitting human Rolodex, capable of recalling minute details about the lives of nearly every player who enters his corner fiefdom.

Or at least it seems that way.

“I remember last year in Pittsburgh,” recalled Tigers centerfielder Curtis Granderson when Casey was still playing for the Pirates. “I ended up at first. And he said, ‘Man, you’re a little guy. I didn’t know you had as much power as you did.’ Now, I had just gotten a single, so his comment didn’t make sense. And then he told me he’d been watching highlights on TV.”

Granderson was halfway into his first full season.

“I couldn’t believe he even knew who I was,” he said.

It is not an uncommon reaction around the sport, and it’s part of the reason Casey was voted the friendliest guy in baseball in a Sports Illustrated poll in May. In fact, the vote wasn’t close: More than 460 players were polled, and Casey took almost half the votes. The players who tied for second, Jim Thome of the White Sox and Mike Sweeney of the Royals, took roughly 30.

Last month, when the Tigers were in Washington playing the Nationals, Granderson toured Congress with Casey and a few other teammates.

“… And we are walking up when a security guard with a rifle spotted us. He looked intense. Until he saw Sean,” Granderson said.

The guard and the chattiest player in baseball began talking. Then Casey slipped inside to watch the Senate vote, and Granderson heard whispers behind him, because a group of tourists recognized Casey. He knew them, too. They’d bumped into the loquacious first baseman a few years back.

And on it went.

And on it goes. Casey the gabber. Casey the one-man welcome wagon. Casey the discreet concierge, offering opponents help in their off-the-field lives.

“He’s amazing,” said Torii Hunter, the Minnesota Twins centerfielder who was in town for a three-game set before the All-Star break. “I can’t say what we talk about. But he’s the best.”

Casey has yet to find a conversation he wouldn’t enter — or start. Sometimes, when a player reaches first, he asks about his children. Sometimes, he asks whether a “situation” is smoother after the player has been traded. And sometimes, he simply offers encouragement.

“Hey, nice swing.” Or, “Nice to see you.” Or, “Nice to see you playing well.”

Sometimes, Casey is so nice that his teammates give him a hard time. His closest friends, like relief pitcher Jason Grilli, don’t always find it endearing when Casey pats an opposing batter on the back.

“I tell him he can’t be telling these guys, ‘Hey, that was awesome, man!’ I mean, try tearing them down for me a little, eh?”

But Grilli shrugs it off, because he knows the reason Casey encourages hitters and offers banter is because Casey gets it.

“He understands this is a platform to reach beyond himself,” Grilli said.

Who wouldn’t want to share a clubhouse with someone like that?

“You get to know so many different people from different countries in this game,” Casey said. “I think it’s fascinating to get to know what their stories are.”

Because of that, his story is pretty interesting, too.

Practice, practice, practice

Casey inherited his storytelling from his father. He picked up his conversation skills from his mother. Even now, he calls her almost daily, usually on the way to the park.

They talk about nothing. They talk about everything.

“Sometimes it’s for 40 minutes, sometimes it’s just a few,” he said. “It’s great. Your mom is your mom.”

Although some professional athletes might not easily admit such a relationship, Casey doesn’t bother with such insecurity.

“Why should I?” he said.

Besides, he added, “my wife talks to her more than I do.”

Casey grew up in Upper St. Clair, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. He began playing baseball at age 5.

“My dad never pushed. It was just fun,” Casey said.

But when he reached high school, he didn’t play as a freshman. He blamed the player ahead of him, who he thought was a coach’s pet. He complained to his father, seeking sympathy.

He received a bag full of tokens instead. Casey took those tokens to a batting cage and hit balls. Every day after school was the same — thousands of pitches, hours of practice.

“I had been looking to blame someone else,” he said. “My dad helped me realize it was me. He bought me the tokens and told me to work.”

He hasn’t stopped hitting since. Even when scouts at major league tryouts sent him home before he’d had a chance to bat because his 60-yard dash was too slow. Even when Division I schools passed him over despite his reputation as one of the best hitters in western Pennsylvania. Even when he finally reached professional baseball and coaches kept trying to change his swing.

He was never a power hitter, never a base-stealer, never that five-tool player. But everywhere he went, he could hit. That fact often was lost in the stereotype of what baseball players should look like. That gave him fire.

“I didn’t want my story to be, ‘I’m not good enough.’ My story was, ‘I am good enough. And I’m going to walk away on my own terms.’ That was my chip.”

More than 10 years after breaking into the majors, Casey is still hitting. Three times, he has made the All-Star team. Five times, he has hit .300. Last year, he helped get the Tigers to the Series and batted over .500 once he got there. This year, after struggling early, he is back at .300, finding the holes and the gaps.

Said Vance Wilson, the Tigers’ backup catcher who has spent the year on the disabled list: “It just seems like whenever we need a hit to bring in a run, he’s there.” As for Casey’s role in the clubhouse and dugouts, Wilson said, “he’s like having a second wife on the team.”

Casey at the chat

A couple of weeks ago, during the first game of a long home stand against Texas, Casey slapped a grounder in the hole between first and second. He beat the throw to first.

Immediately, he began talking. Eventually, he moved to second when Craig Monroe walked. Once he got there, all he could do was nod, as he couldn’t talk to the shortstop and second baseman, who were manning their territory out of earshot.

Finally, he scurried to third when Brandon Inge bunted. The trip there had been unusual for Casey. He rarely got infield hits. He didn’t often move around the base on the strength of someone’s bunt.

Yet when he got to third, he said nothing of his unusual — for him — foray that night. Instead, he asked Ramon Vazquez, the third baseman, how he was enjoying Texas and whether it was better for him than Cleveland, where he’d played last year.

They talked between pitches. Another conversation in the small world of professional baseball, a world Casey helps make smaller.

That role began in the Cape Cod League in the summer of 1994, after his sophomore year at the University of Richmond. He didn’t only hit — he also talked to everyone. “The concession guy, the announcer, the fans,” Casey said. “I knew everybody.”

His coach at the time started calling him the mayor.

“Hey, Casey, you lobbying for votes? You running for office?”

He wasn’t, of course. He was sweeping away the lines that separate those who watch from those who play. Not surprising, the nickname “mayor” stuck. In Cincinnati, where he played for eight seasons, he was known as the “Mayor of Riverfront.” Now, he is simply the Mayor.

“He has a unique ability to strike a conversation with anybody at any time,” said Tigers hitting coach Lloyd McClendon. “He also knows how difficult this game is. He had to work hard to become the player he is. He doesn’t take it for granted.”

So when a batter rips a mid-90s heater that tails away from him and successfully reaches base, Casey acknowledges the feat, even if his inquiry distracts the runner.

“When we were in Philly, the third-base coach told me Casey was talking so much that his players weren’t paying attention to his signs,” said Inge.

Still, few take umbrage with the man who has taken time to learn something about the people who play the game with him. It’s human nature to gravitate toward that. Even in major league baseball.

“I want to be remembered for more than hitting,” Casey said.

And he will.