Hugh Casey (baseball)

Hugh Thomas "Fireman" Casey (October 14, 1913 – July 3, 1951) was a Major League Baseball pitcher. He played for the Chicago Cubs (1935), the Brooklyn Dodgers (1939–42 and 1946–48), the Pittsburgh Pirates (1949), and the New York Yankees (1949).

Professional career
Casey began his professional baseball career with the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association, at the age of 18. After going 13–14 for Memphis in 1938, he was drafted by the Dodgers. He pitched effectively for the next four seasons, but his career is best known for an alleged wild pitch that he threw in the ninth inning of Game 4 in the 1941 World Series, which precipitated a Yankee rally. Catcher Mickey Owen thought that the pitch was a spitball; Casey always swore it wasn't. Officially the play was recorded as a passed ball. Brooklyn lost the game and, eventually, the series. Casey went 0–2.

In January 1943, Casey entered the Navy. He was discharged in December 1945. Upon his return to Brooklyn, he had two good seasons in 1946 and 1947. In 1947, he led the National League in saves for the second time. He pitched well in that year's World Series as well, going 2–0 with a save, but the Dodgers lost in seven games.

Like many of the colorful Dodger players during that era, Casey had his share of adventure. One story recounts a time that he sparred with writer Ernest Hemingway in Hemingway's house.

Casey's major league career ended in 1949. He went 10–4 for his old team, the Crackers, in 1950; Atlanta won the pennant.

Later life
Towards the end of his life, Casey ran a restaurant in Brooklyn.

On July 3, 1951, Casey died in Atlanta, by a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the neck while his estranged wife was pleading with him on the phone. Casey was upset that he had recently been named as the father of child by another woman in a paternity suit. He was 37 years old.

Casey was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.