Top 101 Reds of all time: #50 - Sean Casey
Counting down the legends of the Cincinnati Reds
Some time ago, I began a little project to name the 101 best Cincinnati Reds players of all time. The Big 101, if you will. Here’s my description of the project, and here is a countdown of #101 through #51. Now, let’s get into The Big 50!
In late 1999, I found myself wandering around Pigeon Forge, Tennessee searching for baseball cards.
I had gotten married a few months before, and the lovely Mrs. Dotson and I were making the first of many trips to the Great Smoky Mountains. (Seriously, go rent a cabin in the Smokies during the winter. You won’t regret it.) That was the year that the 1999 Reds had put together such a memorable season, and it seemed like the sky was the limit for the franchise in the 2000s, especially after Ken Griffey, Jr., joined the team a couple of months later.
At the time, however, my favorite Red was Sean Casey. We were roughly the same age, and Casey had just finished his rookie year. I didn’t catch the game on our wedding day (I was otherwise occupied), but Casey went 2-3 with a HBP, improving his slash stats to .355/.419/.579 in a 6-4 loss to Milwaukee. By the time I dragged my wife in search of a baseball card shop that winter to see if we could find some Sean Casey rookie cards, Mrs. Dotson was beginning to understand that she was going to be afflicted with this Reds obsession for the rest of her life. And she figured that Casey would be in our lives for a long time. (He was, in a way, as you’ll see at the end of this piece.)
That Christmas, she surprised me with a great gift.
Sean Casey was a Cincinnati fan favorite from day one, and he was always going to be a storyteller’s dream. The man whose grin stretched from ear to ear, whose arms wrapped around everyone who wore the same jersey (and even those who didn’t), and whose words always appeared to keep everyone laughing in the dugout—he seemed destined to leave a lot more than batting averages and RBIs behind. Sean Casey left memories.
I think of him as a character out of central casting: A big-hearted, earnest kid who carried home the dust of his high-school diamond on his uniform pants and never stopped seeing the game as fun. He was never the game’s fastest player — to say the least — or its flashiest star. But he was its biggest smile. He was “The Mayor,” after all. And that nickname tells you everything you need to know.
Sean Thomas Casey was born July 2, 1974, in Willingboro, New Jersey — an unassuming place to begin for someone who would win the hearts of baseball fans around the country. His dad’s job soon led the family to the Pittsburgh’s suburbs. And you have to wonder if it was there, at Upper St. Clair High School, that Sean learned a vital life skill: how to talk to everyone. Or maybe it was natural. You could show up at a ballgame having never met Casey, and you’d leave feeling like his best friend, or so the stories go.
Casey threw right-handed but batted left, a fact that seemed to suit his contrarian, joyful approach. He practiced in his garage on a net with a tethered ball, and in typical Casey fashion, he built relationships with anyone who offered him a hitting tip or a pat on the back. At 14 or 15, he spent a couple of influential weeks learning the game from former big-league pitcher Grant Jackson, who impressed Sean so deeply that Casey later called him “a second father.”
Before he left high school, Casey led Upper St. Clair to a Western Pennsylvania championship. But from the start, his path to big-time success wasn’t straightforward. Scholarship offers didn’t exactly fly in. The one school that showed him any interest was the University of Richmond, and Casey leapt at the chance. For a kid with big-league dreams, a $1,000 scholarship to a pricey private school might’ve sounded small, but for Casey it was the open door he needed.
The River City of Richmond, Virginia, was where Casey’s legend gained steam. He batted an astounding .461 as a junior, leading all Division I baseball. Over three seasons, his average hovered around .405. Already the seeds of “The Mayor” were planted: in the stands at his summer Cape Cod League games, the perpetually talkative Casey would shake hands with half the crowd between at-bats. The manager finally yelled, “Casey! Play baseball — you’re not the mayor!” And that was that. The nickname stuck forever.
The Cleveland Indians noticed the hitting skills and selected him in the second round of the 1995 Draft. In the minors, he mashed. He won the Lou Boudreau Award as the Indians’ top minor-league position player in 1997. He even singled in his first big-league at-bat that September—although, as he likes to recount, he had to borrow Manny Ramírez’s bat, Tony Fernández’s helmet, and Jeff Manto’s batting gloves because he was caught unprepared. Classic Casey, using borrowed equipment, flashing that grin, and immediately collecting a base hit.
On the eve of the 1998 season, Casey’s career veered — and he entered into my consciousness. He was traded from Cleveland to the Cincinnati Reds for Dave Burba. At the time, it was pretty controversial, since Burba was scheduled to be Cincinnati’s Opening Day starting pitcher. As it turned out, the Reds won that trade, but Casey was also a big winner. Had he stayed in Cleveland, he might have spent years blocked by first baseman Jim Thome, another famously nice guy. Instead, Sean Casey became Cincinnati’s famously nice guy.
Things got dramatic in a hurry. Right after that 1998 trade, Casey got drilled in the face with a throw during batting practice — his orbital bone shattering. Suddenly, his brand-new opportunity with the Reds was in jeopardy. Specialists spent hours piecing his face back together. But in a bit of cosmic favor that fit the storyline, Casey’s vision somehow improved after surgery. He went from borderline terror — blood in his eyeball — to better-than-ever eyesight. If that doesn’t capture the improbable charm of Sean Casey’s life, what does?
He worked himself back onto the field, scuffled a bit, got sent to Triple-A, and returned to Cincinnati in June. The second half of his rookie campaign gave glimpses of the line-drive machine to come. Later that year he married his longtime sweetheart, Mandi Kanka, who had been introduced to him by an old friend. If you asked Casey that fall, I’d bet he was pretty optimistic about what the future would hold. So was I.
As it turned out, 1999 was the year that turned “The Mayor” into a full-on Cincinnati star. Suddenly, he was hitting everything. Some nights, it felt like the only thing that could get him out was the basepaths. He hammered 25 home runs, drove in 99, doubled 42 times, and finished at a scorching .332 — fourth best in the National League. He found himself invited to the All-Star Game in Fenway Park, standing next to Ted Williams and feeling like a kid in a dream.
Casey was the beating heart of that delightful Reds squad that nearly made the playoffs. From his unstoppable first half — he flirted with .380 for a while — to that late-summer tension of a pennant race, 1999 felt like an endless string of highlight reels featuring that familiar No. 21 at first base, waving runners on, grinning from ear to ear. And of course, chatting. Always chatting. He’d greet every opposing player who reached first. Ask about their kids, their dog, their last vacation. That season, fans realized how special Casey was — not just his bat, but the man in the uniform.
Off the field, he was just as approachable and giving. He and Mandi poured their hearts into Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Make-A-Wish, and hospital visits, sometimes official but often just quietly dropping in to see sick kids. For an entire city, in a sport that can feel distant and corporate, Casey was a star who seemed more like your best buddy from next door.
Sean Casey’s time with the Reds spanned eight seasons (1998–2005). He made three All-Star teams (’99, ’01, ’04), batted over .300 four times, and provided such a consistently positive presence that longtime broadcaster Marty Brennaman went so far as to call him “the finest person I’ve ever known.”
He had slumps here and there, endured an occasional injury, but The Mayor’s outlook rarely wavered. You’d see his frustration sometimes — he tells a hilarious story about hitting a couple of doubles off the Green Monster in Boston and getting thrown out at second by a mile, only to have future Reds manager Terry Francona wonder aloud whether Casey might have polio — but usually, that frustration passed in seconds. Then that grin popped up again.
His presence extended beyond the lines. He started “Casey’s Crew,” a program giving disadvantaged kids tickets to Reds games. There was the time he hopped off the team bus to tease Chicago Cubs fans stuck in traffic. There was the time he rescued a woman from a flipped car. It was as if he thought of everything and everybody at once, never running out of kindness. “What you see,” his wife Mandi said, “is what you get.”
By the time he earned another All-Star nod in 2004—finishing with 44 doubles and a .324 average — Casey stood as one of the franchise’s true cornerstones. Fans adored him. Cincinnati still had Larkin and Griffey and Dunn and Kearns, but Casey was the face you put on the scoreboard when you needed to advertise “Reds baseball.”
That’s why the December 2005 trade to Pittsburgh blindsided everyone, including me. “That stinks,” Casey admitted bluntly. He was “The Mayor of Cincinnati,” the local hero, the philanthropic all-star. Teammates were shocked. Fans were borderline heartbroken. Yet life, and baseball, move on. Casey spent half a season with his hometown Pirates before going to the Detroit Tigers at the 2006 trade deadline, a shift that rocketed him from last place to a World Series run. In that Fall Classic, he batted an absurd .529 — smacking liners all over the place — but the Tigers fell short to the St. Louis Cardinals. Even so, Casey found himself once again endearing teammates and fans, showing up in the big moments, making everyone feel good along the way.
After another season in Detroit — where in a players’ poll he was voted the friendliest player in the majors — he joined the Red Sox in 2008, finishing his career with a .322 average in a reserve role. By that point, few doubted that Sean Casey was among the best ambassadors the game had. He hung up his spikes with a lifetime .302 batting average, three All-Star selections, a trunkful of stories, and countless folks across baseball calling him a friend.
Naturally, The Mayor wasn’t going to vanish. He began a broadcasting career with MLB Network in 2009, sprinkling that same brand of positivity into a new craft. He told jokes, offered insight, took time to do charitable work — like building the Miracle League Field in Pittsburgh’s South Hills to serve kids with special needs. He’d pop onto late-night TV shows with Kevin Millar and share pearls of comedic wisdom — stories about Ken Griffey Jr.’s fancy clippers or improbable bar escapades.
In 2012, Casey received the ultimate Cincinnati honor: induction into the Reds Hall of Fame. One summer evening at Great American Ball Park, 40,000 fans stood to cheer their beloved first baseman one more time. Casey put on his Reds jersey, waved to the crowd, and repeated something he’d long believed — Cincinnati was home. I know he’s a Pittsburgh kid, but in truth, Cincy was always his town. At the ceremony, former teammates like Aaron Boone and Dmitri Young turned out to celebrate him. They knew better than anyone that for every rocket double that left his bat, Sean Casey provided an equal measure of laughter, heart, and warmth.
He would later be welcomed into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame as well — recognition for those incredible years at Richmond, for rewriting record books, for forging a legacy in baseball that went well beyond stats.
Sean Casey’s life in baseball could be measured by numbers: a .302 career average, a small mountain of doubles, and three All-Star appearances. But that doesn’t capture who he was. In some ways, his greatest feats sprang from his personality — pulling for each teammate like a brother, chatting up every opponent, leading community initiatives, and making every minor league trainer who ever taped his ankles feel like an essential part of the journey.
Yes, in 1999, when he became my favorite player, he might have been the hottest hitter in baseball for a time, a swashbuckling doubles machine who nearly carried the Reds to a miracle playoff berth. But ask any Reds fan from that era about Casey, and they’ll talk about the grin. The man who stayed after games to sign until his hand cramped. The man who visited local hospitals unannounced to brighten sick children’s days. The man who teased the Cubs fans in Chicago traffic, who cracked jokes on managers behind the dugout rail, who learned from Barry Larkin to “just be you.”
And that’s the beauty of Sean Casey: He was just him — energetic, generous, unfiltered, often hilarious, and perpetually wide-eyed about what baseball could mean. Sometimes people (Aaron Boone, specifically) called him Forrest Gump, the way he was “just really good at life,” always stumbling into improbable success. It sounds funny, but you get it once you hear the stories.
He may now be an analyst on television, or briefly a hitting coach for the Yankees, but in Cincinnati — and all across baseball — Sean Casey is still The Mayor. And for a man who spent his career greeting fans like old friends and turning teammates into family, there can be no higher honor than that.
As a postscript, Mrs. Dotson and I have one son. His name is Casey.
I wish I could say that he was named after Sean Casey. I’ve written about this before, but there’s a whole family history to be written about Casey’s naming. Mrs. Dotson and I went round and round, back and forth. In the end, the compromise was Casey — from “Casey At The Bat.” Shon is my middle name and my son inherited it. Even though, as you’ve seen, I was a big fan of Sean Casey at the time, he never actually entered into the conversation. (Related: don’t even get me started on the story about my wife refusing to let me name our daughter “Larkin.”)
But when The Big 50 was first published (second edition coming this spring!), Casey and I hung out in the Reds TV booth for an inning or two. He enjoyed the fact that Chris Welsh and Jim Day were exceptionally nice to him, talked about him a bit, and treated him like royalty.
They didn’t exactly get one of the facts straight — he wasn’t actually named after Sean Casey — but it was a memorable moment for the kid. And for me.
Because who wouldn’t want their son compared to Sean Casey?
A Sean Casey was the first Reds Shirt I owned. There’s not many players I followed from team to team, but I did keep up with his play wherever he went. I made sure to be there for the Reds Hall of Fame speech from the field. His trade was one of the hardest for me. Thanks for this extra special insight.
Great tribute to one of the all-time great Reds (and great dudes).
Sean Casey is a year younger than me, so he definitely wasn't a "hero," but he was a guy I was proud to cheer for. So many people fake it. This guy doesn't.