MLB salary arbitration often yields stories of discontent, frustration and examples of how the sport’s labor relations are skewed towards ownership. But on the other side of this process is the story of how Sean “The Mayor” Casey was somehow able to secure an extra $200k-400k for his contract despite the fact that he was stained with feline pheromones. Casey regaled viewers of MLB Tonight with the story of his first ever arbitration case.
While his delivery of the story was phenomenal—Casey sounds like a 70-30 combination of Alex Jones and Chris Farley, respectively—the details were still pretty entertaining in their own right:
- Casey brought his wife along to make a point that his job was still a business;
- Casey’s agent told him to write down every negative comment he heard so as to limit his outward reactions towards the people across the table;
- Casey didn’t realize he smelled of cat piss until his wife told him during a break that came after three hours;
- Casey threw his suit jacket out in the garbage immediately following his discovery and continued the case without it.
Modern players could take a lesson from this. Maybe Trevor Bauer wouldn’t have had his character “assassinated” during his case if he had drenched himself in cat urine beforehand.