RetroSimba

A pretty good pitcher, Hugh Casey often got cuffed by the Cardinals. Off the field, as Ernest Hemingway learned, he was no punching bag.

In the 1940s, the Cardinals (four) and Dodgers (three) won seven of the 10 National League pennants that decade. Casey was a prominent pitcher on the Dodgers championship clubs in 1941 (14 wins, seven saves) and 1947 (10 wins, 18 saves).

Against the Cardinals, though, he could look like a guy tossing batting practice. Twice, they clobbered 15 hits in a game against Casey. In one of those, he gave up five homers and 13 runs in seven innings.

Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis gave him nightmares. Casey’s ERA in 28 games there against the Cardinals was 6.03. The career batting averages of some prominent Cardinals against Casey _ Stan Musial (.529), Johnny Mize (.447), Joe Medwick (.429), Red Schoendienst (.400) _ helped get them elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Come to Papa

In 1942, for the second spring in a row, the Dodgers held their training camp in Havana, the capital of Cuba. Novelist Ernest Hemingway was a resident and got to know the ballplayers.

“He used to hang around the Dodgers in the lobby of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba,” broadcaster Red Barber wrote in a column for the New York Times.

In the book “Baseball: When the Grass Was Real,” Dodgers second baseman Billy Herman told author Donald Honig about a “night I’ll never forget” at Hemingway’s Havana house.

“Hemingway took a lot of pride in all this manly stuff, guns and boozing and fighting, things like that,” Herman said to Honig. “He was a big, brawny man, and when he’d had a few drinks, he got mean, real mean.”

Hemingway and his wife, Martha Gellhorn Hemingway (a journalist who was born and raised in St. Louis and was best known for her work as a war correspondent on the front lines), belonged to The Club de Cazadores del Cerro (Hunter Club of the Hills), a gun club that held an international trap and live pigeon shoot.

“So he invited (Dodgers players) Hugh Casey, Larry French, Augie Galan and myself out to the gun club,” Billy Herman said. “Believe me, this was no Coney Island shooting gallery. It was a real fancy place. You had a guy with a portable bar following you around. You’d get up, take your shots, and there’d be a drink ready for you. This went on from three o’clock in the afternoon until dark.”

Then Hemingway brought the players to his house.

“He took us into a huge dining room-living room combination, with all terrazzo floors, and told us to make ourselves comfortable while he went and got the drinks,” Herman said. “He came back with an enormous silver tray, with all the bottles, the mixers, the glasses, the ice _ the whole works. He set it up on this little bookstand in the middle of the floor. And we started drinking.”

Herman said Hemingway gave each of the four players an autographed copy of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and talked with them about his experiences as a foreign correspondent.

“We had quite a bit to drink,” Herman recalled. “Then he laid out some food. After we ate, we had a few more drinks. It was getting pretty late now, and Mrs. Hemingway excused herself and went to bed. Hemingway was good and loaded by this time.”

Drunk and disorderly

Like Hemingway, Hugh Casey was a big drinker. Red Barber said, “Casey drank whiskey by the water glass _ without water.” Columnist Furman Bisher noted that Casey had cheeks “tanned by years of association with fine bourbon.”

Still telling war stories to his Dodgers guests, Hemingway “looked over at Casey, sort of sizing him up,” Herman recalled to Honig.

“You and I are about the same size,” Hemingway said to Casey. “We’d make a good match. I’ve got some boxing gloves. Let’s just spar. Fool around a little bit.”

According to Herman, Casey grinned and shrugged. Hemingway got the boxing gloves, put on a pair and gave the others to Casey.

“As Casey was pulling his gloves on, Hemingway hauled off and belted him,” Herman said. “He hit him hard. He knocked Casey into that bookstand and there goes the tray with all the booze and glasses smashing over the terrazzo floor.”

Hemingway’s wife came running into the room. According to Herman, she looked at the mess on the floor and went back to bed.

“Casey didn’t say anything about the sneak punch,” Herman said. “He got up and finished putting his gloves on. Then they started sparring. They were moving back and forth across the broken glass. Boom. Casey starts hitting him. And hitting him. Then Casey started knocking him down. Hemingway didn’t like that at all.

“Then Casey belted him across some furniture and there was another crash as Hemingway took a lamp and table down with him. The wife came running out, and Hemingway told her it was all right, that it was all in fun. She went away.”

Casey knocked down Hemingway some more. “Finally he got up this one time, made a feint with his left, and kicked Casey in the balls,” Herman said. “That’s when we figured it had gone far enough. We made them take the gloves off.”

Hemingway had his chauffeur drive the players back to their hotel.

“The next day, Hemingway’s wife brought him down to the ballpark,” Herman said. “You never saw a man so embarrassed, so ashamed. He apologized to everybody.”

(Years later, according to New York sports reporter and raconteur Tom Meany, Yankees catcher Yogi Berra was introduced to Hemingway at Toots Shor’s restaurant. After Hemingway departed, Meany asked Berra, “What did you think of him?” Berra said, “He’s quite a character. What does he do?” Meany replied, “He’s a writer.” Yogi said, “Yeah? What paper?”) 

Food for thought

In July 1942, four months after the incident with Hemingway, Stan Musial smashed a pitch straight at Casey “and almost bore a hole through his ample midriff,” the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported. As Casey tried to protect himself, the ball cracked the little finger of his pitching hand and he was sidelined for three weeks. The Cardinals, eight games behind the first-place Dodgers when Casey got injured, went on to win the pennant. Boxscore

After a three-year stint in the Navy, Casey returned to the Dodgers in 1946. He opened a restaurant in Brooklyn, Hugh Casey’s Steak and Chop House, at 600 Flatbush Avenue in the shadow of Ebbets Field.

Long and narrow with soft lighting, cozy booths and a 30-foot mirrored bar at the front, the restaurant was open from noon to 4 a.m, The Sporting News reported. Casey and his wife resided in an upstairs apartment.

Casey “takes great pride in his steaks and chops, condescends to serve fish on Fridays and gets a brisk trade from the neighborhood,” The Sporting News noted. “During the baseball season, the players from the clubs visiting Ebbets Field show up in droves.”

The restaurant’s walls were covered with photos of Dodgers players, including Jackie Robinson. A photo of Casey hung over the cash register. “Right there watching the money,” he told The Sporting News.

Multiple tragedies

On May 24, 1947, a car driven by Casey struck and killed a blind man on Fifth Avenue, near Seventh Street, in Brooklyn at about 11 p.m., the New York Times reported. The victim, 62, was being led across the street by his sister after they had exited a trolley car.

No charges were brought by police after witnesses told them the accident appeared to have been unavoidable, the New York Daily News reported.

Five months later, in the 1947 World Series against the Yankees, the Dodgers won three times. Casey (two wins and a save) had a hand in all three.

He pitched his last game in the majors for the 1949 Yankees and finished with a 75-42 career mark (8-11 against the Cardinals) and 54 saves.

In December 1950, a paternity suit ruling declared Casey the father of a son born out of wedlock to a 25-year-old Brooklyn woman.

Seven months later, on July 3, 1951, Casey, 37, sat on the edge of a bed in an Atlanta hotel room, holding a shotgun to his neck, and telephoned his estranged wife, Kathleen. According to the Associated Press, Casey told her, “I can’t eat or sleep since going through all the embarrassment.”

For 15 minutes, she pleaded with him to put down the gun, the Associated Press reported. Then he killed himself with a shotgun blast while his wife listened. According to the Associated Press, the shot also was heard by Casey’s friend, Gordon McNabb, who had hurried to the hotel after getting an earlier call from Casey telling him of his suicide plan. McNabb was in the corridor outside the room when the shot was fired.

On July 2, 1961, almost 10 years to the day of Casey’s death, Ernest Hemingway, 61, used a shotgun to commit suicide.