Arbitration in Major League Baseball can be frustrating. It can be a rough negotiation between team and player and everything is on the table when it comes to making a case to win, including some insults being exchanged. And the first time a player undergoes that process, it can be an eye-opening experience.
For former Reds first baseman Sean Casey, not only did he have all those things, he had the extra memory of accidentally smelling like cat pee throughout the long day in the courtroom.
Casey explained on MLB Tonight that after the 2000 season, he was in arbitration against the Reds over a few hundred thousand dollars. Casey was unsure why they needed to spend three days over a few hundred grand difference but alas, each side was in arbitration. What came next may be too bizarre to make up.
Talk about sweating out an arbitration case, right @TheMayorsOffice? #MLBTonight đ±đ±đ± pic.twitter.com/zJeh2b6daQ
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) February 14, 2019
As many have noted, “The Mayor” is in his usual enthusiastic form, channeling Chris Farley’s Matt Foley character. If Casey can make a six-hour arbitration hearing sound like Game 7 of the World Series, he can make anything sound interesting.
Anyway, Casey explained certain tidbits of the hearing like his agent recommending him to write things down when he heard a negative comment about him so he wouldn’t react to those comments. Casey also explained that he brought his wife with him and during a break, figured out that their cat peed on his suit jacket.
After explaining that something smelled bad and trying to figure out what it was, Casey’s wife went to smell his jacket and figured out it was him.
“And then my wife comes over and she’s like, she grabs my suit jacket and she’s like [sniffs jacket], “Oh man, I think it might be you'”
“And I’m like, ‘Really?'”
“She goes, and we had just gotten these two cats at the end of the season. And she goes, ‘Is that the suit jacket the cat peed on in the last road trip?'”
“And I go, ‘Yeah, didn’t you go get that dry cleaned?'”
“She goes, ‘Yeah, the dry cleaners must not have got it out.'”
“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I do smell like cat pee!'”
“And you know when you sweat, I figured this out the hard way, when you sweat profusely, cat pee goes flying out everywhere. Like it engulfs, it’s just a cloud of cat pee in the courtroom, it’s unbelievable.”
It was all worth it. Casey won his arbitration case and ended his career 1-0 in the courtroom. Whether it was because he had the best case or he overwhelmed the three-person panel with his smell that they were convinced that way, we’ll never know. We do know that it’s more tolerable to sit smelling like cat pee when it results in more money.
