What ever happened to Casey?

I've heard this question too many times. Over the years, a lot of people have asked me to tell my side of Casey's story, to say what I know about the way the events of that year played out. I've always said I'd tell the tale when the time was right, and so far, the time hasn't felt right to me, at least not until now. It's not as if I have some big secret to tell about Casey, some fact that baseball historians haven't uncovered in their quest to turn him into a saint or legend or something like that. I just know some things about Casey that nobody else does, that's all, and especially about how it all ended.

The first time I faced Casey, he was a raw rookie and I was in my prime. This was back at the start of the 1959 season—Casey's Year, people call it now—which turned out to be my last year in the Bigs, though I had no reason whatsoever to suspect that my end was near that April. Sure, I was thirty-five, which was getting over the hill for a flamethrower like me, but as far as I was concerned I was better than I'd ever been. I figured I still had years left in my arm. I was still chucking heat as hard as ever, but after nearly fifteen years in the league I was much smarter than when I first started out. I'd become a pitcher, not just a hard-throwing fireballer who'd rear back and try to blast the ball past a hitter—or through the hitter, depending on my mood. I knew it, and the batters knew it. That's why they were all so goddamned afraid of me.

April, 1959. Nearly forty goddamn years ago now if you can believe that. It still feels like yesterday to me. Back then, no one—not me, not Casey, nobody else on the face of the Earth—could have imagined what was about to happen over the course of that season. No one even knew who Casey was yet, but then to think that six months later, not only would I be out of the game for good, but Casey... well, everyone knows what happened to Casey.

The Story of Casey. That's how people talk about him, in capital letters like that. The thing is the Story of Casey has become more like the Myth of Casey. You wouldn't believe some of the things I've heard people claim he did. For instance, some of the ballparks they say he hit the ball clear out of weren't even built in 1959, for crying out loud. And some of the Hall of Fame pitchers they say he took deep didn't throw a pitch in the Bigs that year, either. But I've heard people argue that they saw it happen, that they were there in the stands, they're certain of it. It doesn't exactly surprise me—we all have a tendency to fancy up our memories, although usually we do it to the bad ones that we don't know how to deal with otherwise. In this case, it's kind of the same thing, I guess, making Casey out to be even better than he was to try to make sense of what happened.

On the other hand, I've also heard some people complain about that, about how he's become mythical. Wasn't he just like any other player, they ask? Wasn't he just like the rest of us? Well, let me tell you: there was nothing normal about Casey, nothing usual or common or average. When I try to imagine what he could have accomplished if only he'd had the chance.

It's been so long now that I wonder if I've done the very same thing with my own memories. Maybe what I remember is just as skewed, affected by the myth that the story of Casey has become. But when I think of that year, everything stands out as if it were lit by a spotlight. The rest of my life is dim and gray in comparison, but that year, Casey's first in the Bigs and my last, stands out as if it had been filmed in Technicolor.

Since I stopped pitching, baseball has gone crazy: salaries skyrocketing through the roof, strikes and lockouts, a cancelled World Series—I still can't fathom the greed that led to that tragedy—and steroid use tarnishing so many of the record-breaking hitters. In a way, I feel like baseball doesn't deserve Casey any more now. That's what almost stops me from telling Casey's story, even now. But I decided long ago that I'd tell the story before I left the game.

The truth should be told—not for my sake, but for Casey's. He deserves it.

It was 1959, my fifteenth season in the Bigs. I pitched my entire career for the Gotham Gray Sox. In my early days there we were a mediocre team, but from about '53 on we were always at the top of the league, duking it out for the pennant year after year, mainly with the Kansas City Kings. Our success was based on a strong balance of pitching and slugging. I'm not trying to sound arrogant here, but I was a big part of that equation. I was the staff ace throughout the '50s, and you can look up my stats in the record book and compare them to any of my peers if you like. I might not have won quite as many games as some of them, and there were certainly some guys who chalked up more strikeouts or posted lower ERAs, but I was the first chucker that Rufus, the Gray Sox Manager, would put on the mound in a big game, and the last one any opposing team wanted to face. That's all I needed to know then and now.

We'd won the Series in '57, of course—I was the MVP, pitching and winning three times in that seven-game series. In '58, the Kings had stolen the Pennant away from us in the last week of the season, so we were itching to get back into the post-season again in '59. I wanted desperately to make it back to the Series. It was like a drug addiction—once I'd had my first taste of it, I couldn't imagine living without it. I only had one goal heading into the season that April—I intended to win the deciding game of the Series again that year.

Unfortunately, I got knocked around in Spring Training and didn't fare much better in my first couple of April starts. I'm still not sure what it was. Over the course of my career, I usually came out of the gates at full speed in April, but in '59 I couldn't seem to shake the rust off. But I wasn't too worried about it. I'd had slumps before. I just approached each game the same way and figured I'd put it together sooner or later.

My third start was against Pittsburgh, Casey's team. I didn't even know his name then. No one did—they hadn't started plastering CASEY across his broad shoulders yet; that was still at least a month away. The Pittsburgh Piledrivers had been one of our punching bags for years. We always looked forward to a series with Pittsburgh to knock us out of any slumps we might be in or to end a losing streak. Our batters often said hitting against Pittsburgh felt like batting practice, and I can tell you that I never had more confidence in my stuff than when I saw a Piledrivers uniform on the guy standing in the batter's box.

So, facing the Piledrivers was just what the doctor ordered for me. I went one-two-three through the first inning, but I knew my stuff wasn't the reason. Their hitters got themselves out with a couple of grounders and a lazy pop fly. Still, I wasn't worried. That's the way pitching works. Half the time, it's the hitters making mistakes, not the pitch tricking them. Earlier in my career, I might have been too naïve to recognize the difference, but by this time, I knew it. I didn't have my top stuff working—I wasn't hitting my spots like I needed to, and the pop on my fastball just wasn't there. I knew that eventually it would come back to haunt me, most likely sooner rather than later.

Sooner is right: I got into trouble right away in the second, and before long, the bases were jammed with only one out. That's when Casey came up for the first time—he was batting eighth like most rookies do, just before the pitcher's spot, though we all know he didn't stay at the bottom of the order for long. Nowadays, I'm sure there are plenty of Lazyboy managers out there who'd recommend walking Casey with the sacks drunk even though it would plate a run, but remember, back then, still in early April, he was a nobody. Anyway, even if I'd had an open base, I wouldn't have considered walking him for a second. Why would I? I was the five-time All Star, two-time Pitcher of the Year who'd tossed a no-hitter and half a dozen one-hitters. Who was he? Just some fresh-off-the-farm kid, still wiping the milk mustache off his upper lip, batting eighth on a second division team that hadn't played more than a game or two above .500 in fifteen years.

Something in this farm boy's look must have struck me as cocky, though—or maybe I was just pissed off because, now that I think about it, I believe I'd just walked Tommy Janzen, a light-hitting, no-name shortstop you've probably never even heard of, on four pitches, and to load the bases no less. In any case, I was in a bad mood, and this unknown rookie hayseed named Casey became the focus of my anger.

After taking my sign from Pedro, I reared back and tucked that first pitch right under Casey's chin, high and hard. There was no way he could have been expecting it—it was a dangerous pitch for me to throw considering that if I hit him, he'd get to go to first base and all the other runners would move up a sack, pushing in a run. Even if I missed the batter by a hair as I intended, there was also the possibility that Pedro might not be able to catch it, and then the runner on third could score on the passed ball. I didn't hit Casey, but I came about as close to it as possible, and he recoiled back like he'd just heard a rattlesnake shake his tail right in front of him. He dropped to the ground in a heap.

Chin music, we called it back then. Nowadays, hardly any pitchers have the balls to do it any more. And I'm not talking about baseballs... They'd rather nibble away on the outside corner while these hulking steroid-munchers wearing big elbow pads like hockey players hang right over top of the plate. No batter would dare do that back in my day, let me tell you, or they'd pay the price. Remember, Casey didn't do anything other than come up at the wrong time—when I was in a bad mood because of my own mistakes—and I knocked him flat on his ass.

The dust cleared around the plate, and Pedro tossed the ball back to me. Pedro's real name was Pete—Pete Baxter—but we all called him Pedro 'cause he sort of looked Mexican. It was really just his mustache. This was right around when Hispanic players were just starting to come into the league, but we didn't have any real Pedros on the team to compare Pete to yet. Anyway, the dust cleared and Pedro tossed the ball back to me, and behind him, Fat Frank Maguire, one of my all-time least favourite umps, gave me a look he must have thought was tough before waddling around to brush the dirt off the plate and give the kid a chance to compose himself. I figured the rookie was probably still flat on his ass watching his life flash before his eyes. Must have been a short feature, considering how young he was.

To his credit, though, Casey got right up off his butt and didn't even glance in my direction. I know because I was watching him, ready to stare him down with that look I'd perfected in my bathroom mirror in my own rookie year—the look they used to talk about in the paper and on the radio when I was someone worth talking about. I still have this photo I cut out of the paper the morning after I pitched my no-hitter—a close-up of my eyes peeking over my glove, looking in for the call from Pedro. "Smoke's Glare," the caption reads. I still look at that photo from time to time. It makes me remember what it felt like to be at the top. I was only there for a short time, but there's nothing else in my life that compares to it—except for what happened with Casey, of course, but that came later.

So I gave Casey my glare, waiting for any excuse to play that same song again, maybe even plunk him this time in spite of the run that would score if I did, if he dared to so much as blink in my direction. But Casey didn't do anything to offend me. He just took a couple easy swings with that big twig of his and then got back in the box before Fat Frank was even done tidying up. Pedro put down one finger and I responded with some heat right down the pipe, figuring the rookie would be too shaky to even lift his bat off his shoulder. Well, Casey didn't just lift that lumber off his shoulder—he swung that oak branch with all the speed and power that he quickly became famous for. Now, I could still break 95 miles an hour back then and I know that pitch was smoking when it left my hand, but Casey launched it deep and high into right field. I knew it was gone the moment he hit it—the sound told me everything I needed to know. The crowd knew it, too—a hush fell over the stadium as every conversation paused in mid-sentence and every eye in the joint followed the high arc of that mammoth blast. I turned to watch it with honest admiration. To think that some punk kid fresh off the boat from the Minors was gonna bust me with a grand slam in his first swing. But I got lucky—he pulled it foul by a few feet. It still sailed fifteen or twenty rows deep into the stands, and would have been out of any park in the league, no question, had it been fair. That made me think. He'd swung so fast that he cranked my hardest fastball foul. Not many players could do that.

That monster shot that he just missed hitting off me was one of two reasons why I remember the first time Casey stepped into the box against me. Number One was that near Grand Slam. Number Two was yet to come.

I was too arrogant to get scared by Casey's display of power, but I was also too smart a pitcher to give him something hittable again. I told myself it was just a long, loud strike, and I didn't squander the second chance it offered me. Looking back, I think it actually helped me find the focus I'd been lacking so far that spring. Maybe this was the wake-up call I'd needed to find my groove again. Pedro flashed the next sign, and it was exactly what I wanted so I knew we'd found that groove together. I put the next pitch right where he held his glove: off the plate outside, thigh-high, a juicy pitch if it had been three or four inches closer to the batter. I didn't expect Casey to swing, although I wouldn't have minded if he did. A lot of rookies would have. I didn't know it then, of course, but even that far outside, it was a risky pitch—later that season, I saw Casey punch pitches off the plate outside the other way and knock 'em all the way over the left field wall. I guess he had to since by then no pitcher with any sense would throw him anything close to the heart of the plate.

Casey didn't swing this time, although the half-step he took towards the pitch said a lot about how much he wanted to take another prodigious hack like his first one. Prodigious, that's quite a word. I've always liked the sound of it, and once I learned what it meant, I always thought of Casey's swing specifically. It was so utterly, absolutely, perfectly prodigious.

So, 2-1 then: a batter's count, you'd think, especially since the batter had nearly taken the only strike I'd thrown deep, but Pedro and I knew better; we had him right where we wanted him. My next pitch was a gem: letter-high, a couple inches off the inside corner, virtually unhittable, especially with the batter unconsciously leaning out over the plate with that outside fastball still on his mind. Still, Casey tried to hit it, and I was surprised when he managed to foul it back—I hadn't expected him to be able get any wood on it at all, but his bat was that fast. It didn't matter, though; a foul is as good as a whiff when it comes to counting strikes.

2-2 then. Pedro and I had plenty of options, but I didn't want to waste a pitch and give the runners an extra jump with the count full, so I knew this was the moment. Up until now, I'd thrown nothing but heat: four pitches, four fastballs. It was time to unveil the junk. It was time for Casey to meet Uncle Charlie.

Now, I was known for my hard fastball, for the speed of it and for the tailing movement that meant even when a batter managed to put wood to cowhide, more often than not, he wouldn't hit it square—the ball would either go too high and end up a lazy can o' corn or get pounded into the dirt and be gobbled up by our sure-handed middle infielders. But no pitcher can rely entirely on one pitch alone. My reputation was solidified by my wicked curveball, which I could throw for strikes or in the dirt as I needed. I mainly threw it north-south, right over the top so that it fell straight down off the table as it approached the plate, but I could also drop my arm down to the side if I wanted to change things up a bit. If I threw it side-arm to a right-handed hitter, it would look like the ball was coming in high on the inside corner of the plate—in other words a fat, fat pitch to hit—but then the curve would bite and take it down and away until it ended up all the way across the plate and an inch or so off the dirt. It was an excellent strikeout pitch—rarely could a right-handed batter stop himself from committing before it was too late.

That side-arm curve wasn't going to help me much against him since he was a left-handed batter. No, for lefties, I just went north-south, hoping that the change of speed and direction in the ball kept them from being able to connect with it. So far that spring, my curve had been pretty flat, which probably was part of the reason for my lack of success. But this time, finally, it clicked. I pulled the string, and the ball snapped down in front of the plate like a Yo-Yo. Casey flailed over top of it with that all-or-nothing swing his fans would come to know and love. Strike Three! I remember Casey shook his head like he couldn't believe he'd missed it, and he took a look at me as he walked back to the Visitor's Dugout. I was surprised to see him smiling even though I'd just struck him out. It wasn't a cocky smile, though; it looked like an honest-to-gosh, "Man, I can't believe I'm in the Big Leagues" sort of smile. And coming to know Casey as I did, I'd say that's exactly what it was.

It was only the second out, but their pitcher, Buddy Morris, was up next, and I had no trouble with him. Three high fastballs and he was gone, shaking his head like he couldn't believe he'd missed, even though he'd whiffed the last dozen times he'd faced me. Buddy was a bit thick. We used to call him "Professor," even to his face, but he never figured out why. No surprise there.

We went on to score two runs in the next frame and that was all I needed. I pitched all nine for the shutout, managed ten strikeouts, including Casey once more on that same curveball. I will admit that Casey hit another ball hard. Lucky for me, he got under it and skied it. Still, he took Teddy Davis all the way back to the center field wall.

Before reading this, you probably thought Casey started hitting home runs the moment he arrived in the Bigs. You might even scoff at my memory of that day, but if you look it up, you'll see it's true. Casey went 0-for-3 that day, including two strikeouts. Nothing in the box score will tell you about the grand slam he just missed hitting in the 2nd inning or the other fly he hit to the center field fence in the 8th. That's the thing about statistics and box scores. All you can learn when you read them is the result of what a hitter or pitcher did, not the steps that led to that result. That's why we watch sports, though, to see the way the game progresses. Sure, spectators want to see their team win, but they also want to see the extraordinary moment, the once-in-a-million event that may never be repeated again. Watching sports is like playing the lottery that way—you may never see that jackpot moment, but you keep coming back thinking maybe this time it'll happen . That's why it's not good enough just to read the paper the next day. Even listening or watching the game broadcast often isn't good enough for a true fan. After all, saying, "I was there when...," is much different than saying you saw it on TV or heard it on the radio. In that sense, I've been lucky—after I retired from playing, I started broadcasting games which meant I still got to see them in person. And now there are so many great moments that I can say, "I was there," about. Still, the best ones, the ones that are most important, were the ones that occurred during my own time playing the game, and especially in that final year, Casey's year.

Enough about me. After all, who am I? Who would you rather talk about, Douglas "Smoke" Stachowski, an almost-made-it-into-the-Hall-of-Fame pitcher who you may never have even heard of before? Or Kasimir Cruickshank, better known as Casey, whose career was cut short well before his time, and who many believe just might have been the best hitter the game has ever known? If only he'd been given a chance to prove it himself. If only things hadn't happened the way they did.

A few years back, I remember reading that some statistics-obsessed fan had programmed a computer to simulate Casey's career numbers. He plugged in everything he could find about Casey and then ran the program. Apparently, the computer geek used three different sets of parameters to chart the rise and fall of Casey's career: the typical course of a Hall-of-Fame player (if that can be said to by typical), an average journeyman hitter, and a nobody who barely manages to keep himself in the game for long enough to call it a career. What stood out for me in that article was the fact that even in the worst case scenario, the resulting statistics would still have been considered exceptional. Of course, the best case statistics were completely off the map, far better than any other player in history. The stat geek decided that the most logical course was to settle on the middle, the "average" ballplayer parameters. But even in that case, the resulting career statistics were amazing, nearly the best if not the best.

Of course, we'll never know. The only thing I will say about that article is that Casey was not "average," not by any means. There was nothing average or typical or normal about him.

I already told you the first reason why I remember the first time I pitched to Casey so clearly: his mammoth blast that he pulled just foul. But you might remember that I said I had two reasons. What was the other one? I wish I could say it was because I found my stuff with that curveball and got back on track for the first time that season. But that's not it. No, the other reason I'll never forget the first time I faced Casey is because when I pitched that beauty of a curveball to strike him out, I felt a sharp twinge in my elbow, a pain so unexpected and so unusual that it literally took my breath away for a moment. I'd never felt anything like it. It made me feel nauseous, and I'll admit, it frightened me. Looking back now, I realize that up until that moment, I'd always thought of myself as invincible. I knew that I'd eventually have to stop pitching, that I'd get old, but I figured it would just be a gradual thing—bit by bit, I'd lose some speed on my fastball or the precision of my pitch location and then eventually, when the time was right I'd call it a career and hang up my cleats. I'd go off to some tropical island somewhere where no one knows about baseball and hide away, coming back to civilization only when they inducted me into the Hall of Fame, if that. But that whole fantasy disappeared the moment I felt that pain. It made me realize that I was mortal after all. The worst feeling of all was that I knew now I wouldn't be able to finish my pitching career on my own terms.

That was the first time I'd ever felt anything other than natural soreness in my pitching arm, but it certainly wouldn't be the last time. Every hook I threw after that one hurt, more and more as the season went on, and eventually every fastball and change-up hurt, too—every warm-up toss, every underhand lob, even every goddamn handshake hurt. It got to the point where my elbow hurt round the clock, where my arm felt dead. And by the end of that season, my arm was done. And I was done, out of the game at thirty-five.

But when people talk about that year, they don't say much about me, about how my pitching career was cut short when I should've had another five years or more. No, all that people talk about when that year comes up is Casey. What happened to Casey.