RICHMOND, Va. -- Will Rodgers famously said he never met a man he didn't like. That same sentiment can most likely be applied to former Richmond baseball standout Sean Casey, who recently returned to his alma mater as a guest of the Flying Squirrels. And as he has throughout his career, he made a whole new group of friends in the process.
Spend five minutes in the company of Casey and you're bound to a "crazy story." He has a million of them from his time in baseball, which has gone from NCAA batting champ to MLB All-Star and now network analyst. But it almost didn't happen.
Despite being a standout player at Upper St. Clair High School in Pittsburgh, Casey had zero offers to play in college. So his father gave him some prophetic advice.
“If they're not going to come to you, you've got to go to them,” Casey recalled. “He goes, ‘You got to play offense in your life, not defense.’”
On his father's suggestion, Casey wrote letters to 30 different college programs, practically begging for any notice of his skills. His father had one more request when he finished.
“Write one more letter to the University of Richmond. They sent you a brochure last summer in the Keystone State Games,” he recalled. “I go, ‘All right.’”
Out of all the letters he wrote, he got exactly zero responses. He was resigned to attend college in Cleveland and maybe walk on to the team. But at one of his final high school games, former Richmond coach Mark McQueen showed up behind home plate and had an offer.
“After the game, I got talking to him. They had like a thousand bucks. We can offer you a thousand dollars to come to the University of Richmond. I was like, ‘Whatever! I'll walk on.’ I ended up going to the University of Richmond because Mark McQueen drove 6 hours to see me play against a team named Montour. The 31st letter was the University of Richmond.”
It turned out to be what Casey calls “the perfect fit” even if the facilities back then were less than glamorous.
“I used to go up to the basement of the Robins Center,” Casey recalled. “It was the dungeon where the baseball team. Here's the basketball facility, here's football. ‘Hey, baseball! You're in the dungeon with this one piece of turf with a tire and a batting cage.’ But I kind of loved the grimy-ness of it. I loved going up and hitting by myself at night.”
Casey was an All-American as a freshman and won the NCAA batting title as a junior while leading the Spiders to the NCAA tournament. He became a second-round draft pick of the Cleveland Indians. It was the beginning of a career that saw him play for five different teams and be selected as an All Star three times. And he picked up his nickname, “The Mayor,” for his affability and willingness to start a conversation with just about anyone in his presence.
“My dad is very outgoing and gregarious, and my mom has the gift for gab,” he said. “My mom can carry on a conversation with anybody and you're like, ‘What a great conversation I just had with Joan Casey.’ ‘What did you talk about?’ ‘I don't even know.’”
His personality led him directly into his next career as an analyst for the MLB network where he has worked since 2009. He finds life on the other side of the microphone more of a challenge than hitting a 98 mile per hour fastball.
“That asking questions is harder than you think,” Casey said. “I'm sure, Lane, you feel the same way. When I first got into TV I was like, I can talk baseball all day, but we got to ask guys questions? This is not easy.”
But as he has throughout his career, Casey has continued to work at his craft be it on the field or off. His perseverance is what got him to college, to the Show and to TV. It's the number one lesson he tries to pass on to the next generation. And much of it started right here.
“Can't tell you how many swings I took, putting a tee up and trying to hit the ball to left center corner of the cage and every night doing that. If you want to play at the highest level, you've got to put the work in,” Casey said. “And if you want to stay there, you have to mentally be able to weather the storms of that industry.”
Casey credits "so many people" that helped him along the way.
"University of Richmond for me was a steppingstone,” Casey said. “Coach Mac, Coach Atkins, Wayne Smith. That whole staff. All the guys that I played with. Those guys were the steppingstones for me to get to the big-league level. Without University of Richmond and without the Richmond community, I am forever indebted to them.”
Casey spent half of last season as the hitting coach for the New York Yankees and considered himself very fortunate to be able to wear the pinstripes.
The team wanted him to return in that role for the upcoming season, but Casey declined, preferring to spend more time with his daughters and continue his work for the MLB Network.
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