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Sean Casey Shares Fabulous Stories About Terry Francona, Wily Mo Pena

BOSTON (CBS) -- Sean Casey was always known as "The Mayor" during his playing days, and in a guest appearance on Toucher & Rich this week, it wasn't difficult to understand why.

After discussing some current topics around baseball, Rich Shertenlieb asked the hard-hitting question that everyone's been too scared to ask Casey: Did Terry Francona ever invite Casey into his office while he was going No. 2?

"You know what? No doubt I was in there at some point while he was taking a dump," Casey said with a laugh. "Tito, man, is a one-of-a-kind human being. Literally, him and [Jim] Leyland were my two favorite managers."

Casey, who played his final MLB season under Francona with the Red Sox in 2008, shared a memorable tale from the dugout.

"The one day in Boston I get the start and I hit this ball off the Green Monster, and I'm rounding first and I wasn't the fastest guy in the world. I even think I had a hip flexor injury at the time. And gauging the Monster sometimes is not that easy. So it comes off the Monster, I go for two, bam, I'm thrown out by like 20 feet. The crowd's like, 'You jerk!' I come back in the dugout, put my helmet down, and I was like, 'Aw man, next time I'm gonna stay at first.'

"Next ball I hit, right-center gap, I crush it, I'm like, 'That's gone.' So I'm kind of like in my trot. It hits the top of the fence. Nick Markakis comes up, boom, barehanded, throws it into second base, gets me by like 10 feet from right-center. I'm like, OK, that's not OK right there. ... So I come running in, the crowd's booing now, the crowd's really booing me like, 'You suck! Please stop running the bases. Stay at first.'

"So I come in, I'm kind of dejected, I put my helmet down, I'm friggin' so frustrated, I go to sit down. And Tito's like, 'Case, can I talk to you real quick?' So I go over like, 'Yeah, what's up, Tito?" And he goes, "I'm just wondering ... do you think you might have polio?'

Casey said he hit another ball off the Monster in his next at-bat, and the crowd gave him a standing ovation for staying at first.

(History shows it was probably this game, in which Casey only got thrown out once. He was also thrown out by Markakis the night before. The timing doesn't take away the punch of the story.)

In a totally separate discussion, Casey was asked if he ever heard of any player having a room service restriction at hotels like Pablo Sandoval had with the Giants. Casey didn't know of anything like that specifically, but did share a tidbit from when he was teammates with Wily Mo Pena in Cincinnati.

Wily Mo Pena
Willy Mo Pena barrels through Ryan Freel to make a catch. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

"The one thing I can remember is that Wily Mo Pena was such a monster that they told Wily Mo Pena, you have to stop lifting. You cannot lift another weight, because you are so huge and you just continue to get huge and your back looks like he's an absolute monster. That's as close as I've gotten when I think about hey, you can't eat those meals. We told Wily Mo Pena, you've gotta stop lifting. You cannot lift. You need to stop lifting and eating, because you're too big," Casey said. "He was like, 'That's wonderful, thank you very much, I don't want to lift.' You'd see Wily Mo Pena's dad's back and it's even bigger than Wily Mo's. You're just like, 'Look Wily Mo, you're going to look like that if you keep lifting. You're a baseball player, not an inside linebacker.'"

Listen to the full interview below!

 

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