Mighty Casey Baseball

Causey was a member of the New York Giants staff when John McGraw had solid control of the National League from the late teens and early twenties.

Born and raised near Georgetown, Florida on August 11, 1893, Cecil Algerton (Red) Causey was signed to pitch in the minor leagues of the south after spending time playing sports in his local Florida leagues.  He first pitched in the South Atlantic League with Savannah, then Portsmouth, and then Waco in the Texas League.  If nothing else, Causey spent plenty of time with winners – in his first season with Savannah in 1914, he went 18 – 11 and helped Savannah win the first half season (they played split seasons then) and, despite a slower second half, won the league championship in a postseason playoff.

After winning 19 of 29 decisions with Waco in 1916, the New York Giants signed Causey but sent him to Rochester of the International League for another season of seasoning before giving him his first taste of the majors in 1918.  There, as a frequent starter, Causey went 11 – 6 and finished second on the Giants in innings behind Pol Perritt.  Other teammates included Hall of Famers Ross Youngs and Larry Doyle, outfielder George Burns, and utility outfielder Jim Thorpe.

The 1919 team also finished second desite thoughts that the Giants would walk away with the pennant.  Hal Chase arrived and both Chase and Heinie Zimmerman messed with the team chemistry.  Causey’s slow start and falling to the back of the rotation gave McGraw a reason to try someone else when the Giants failed to meet McGraw’s expections – so McGraw traded Causey, three other players and cash for Boston Braves pitcher Art Nehf.  Causey left a team that finished second to join a team that finished 25 games under .500 and nearly 40 games behind the world champion Cincinnati Reds.

Nicknamed “Red” because of his hair, Causey was frequently cited in news articles with his full name because, well, Cecil Algerton is a heck of a handle.  The papers usually typed it as Cecil Algernon, but what the hey – it was cool.  Causey stood about 6′ 0″ tall, but if he weighed 160 pounds, it was a lot.  One Chicago Tribune scribe mentioned that he was six feet tall, but about ten and a half inches wide.

Causey was signed by Philadelphia in 1920 where he started 26 games, completing 11, but finished just 7 – 14.  The Phillies were also bottom feeders and Causey’s lack of a strikeout pitch doomed him to little success.  In 1921 the Phillies included Causey in a trade back to the Giants.  Causey was a member of the 1921 and 1922 World Series teams but didn’t see action.

With what appeared to be a lame arm, the Giants loaned Causey to Indianapolis in the American Association, but Causey was no more successful there than he had been with the Giants – where McGraw usually used Causey as a mop up reliever.  Signed with Baltimore for the 1924 season, Causey didn’t make the team and returned to New York – where he became a police officer.

After his retirement, Causey returned to Florida, settling in the Tampa area.  Diabetes eventually gave him significant trouble and his right leg was amputated in hopes of stemming its advancement – but two days later, he died on November 11, 1960 in Avon Park, Florida.

(Information gleaned from articles in The Sporting News between 1914 and 1925, as well as his baseball obituary in TSN on 11/22/1960, Retrosheet.Org, Baseball-Reference.com, and one mention in “The Original Curse” by Sean Deveney.  It’s on page 93…  If I ever get to the library, I’ll modify this and supplement it with information gleaned from the NY Times and other papers…)

More famous for other pursuits, Howdy Groskloss had two brief moments as a footnote in baseball history.  In the 1930s, Groskloss was a second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates – a teammate of the Waner Brothers, Pie Traynor, Arky Vaughn, and other great Steel City players.  Later in life – much later actually – for a few months the 100-year-old Groskloss was the oldest living baseball player, having lived to see his 100th birthday in his luxurious retirement home in Vero Beach, FL.

Born on April 10, 1906, Groskloss was the son of an opera singer and learned at an early age to play the violin.  His father also was a huge baseball fan and a friend of Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss.  Groskloss himself was a fine athlete – and Dreyfuss actually offered Groskloss cash NOT to play football – which Howard declined.  Groskloss played sports – a lot of them – as a hobby but his true love was medicine.  At twelve, Groskloss watched his father die of pneumonia and Howard decided then to pursue a career as a doctor.

Groskloss went to Amherst College, where he was awarded the Mossman Cup as the best student athlete after playing tailback, baseball, track and even participating on the swim team – an award handed to him by former United States President (and Amherst alum) Calvin Coolidge.  Dreyfuss then gave Groskloss a $10,000 bonus to sign with the Pirates even as Groskloss knew he would be continuing his medical career.  On trains between cities, Groskloss would read medical textbooks – much to the chagrin of Pirate managers who didn’t want someone who treated baseball as a hobby playing second base.

You can look it up – of the guys that played second base for the Pirates in 1931, the best one was probably Groskloss.  He just had better things to do.  In 1932, his baseball career was over – but his better career was just beginning.

Howard went to Yale and later Penn to study medicine, turning down a Rhodes Scholarship because he didn’t want to delay his becoming a doctor.  He was a surgeon in the Pacific theater of World War II, and eventually a teaching and pioneering doctor – among the first to regularly use an ultra-sound to monitor the status of the women whose pregnancies he shepherded.  Later in his career, after practicing and teaching at the University of Pittsburgh hospitals and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he moved to Florida and was among the founders of the University of Miami’s School of Medicine.

Interviewed on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2006, Grosklosss was asked what he remembered about Pirate games.

“I remember there were a lot of women standing around after the games,” he replied. “You couldn’t get through all the women.”

He also remembered barnstorming with Honus Wagner and playing games against Jim Thorpe, meeting (and liking) the intelligent Pirates general manager, Branch Rickey, and having a meal with Charles Lindbergh, who was the brother-in-law of Groskloss’s college roommate.

I found two articles about Groskloss written by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Gene Collier, the first of which was written when he turned 100 on Opening Day, 2006, and the last of which was written when he died three months later.  Unfortunately, the SABR website is down right now and I can’t dig through old Sporting News articles.  Maybe later this week if time allows…  Collier’s articles are very well done.

Remember that scene near the end of Field of Dreams, where Moonlight Graham gives up playing baseball in the corn to help Kevin Costner’s daughter who was choking?  Graham said he was grateful for the chance to play baseball, but his life was better served serving others.   One imagines that Graham and Groskloss would have gotten along just fine.