Rutland, Vermont, is an hour forty-five from Burlington, almost four to Boston and very, very far from Major League Baseball. And so there are times — random times, like in the time it takes to drive from home to work in the predawn darkness — that Donovan Casey starts thinking again.
What if, he wonders to himself, the manager had had me pinch run?
What if he had put me in as a defensive sub?
What if I had gotten one at-bat and hit a fucking homer?
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But wait … hold on a second … what if I had gotten one at-bat and struck out on three pitches?
It’s not productive, necessarily. Just human. For five days in April 2022, Casey was on the Washington Nationals, checking off almost every verb expected of a new major leaguer. The outfielder called his wife and parents. He hustled to Pittsburgh. He looked at the uniform in his locker, his name on the back, the No. 44 right under it. Then he jogged, threw and stretched. He put the uniform on, a warmup jacket over it, then took the jacket off to stretch some more in the dugout. He then traveled with the team to D.C. He received another jersey in another locker. He did not, however, play at any point. And that’s why what if is burrowed in his brain.
***
THERE IS A PUBLIC SPREADSHEET on the internet titled “Near Major Leaguers.” Compiled by a man named Bill Hickman for the Society for American Baseball Research, it does exactly what it promises, cataloging the players who came so close to their childhood dream but never made it onto the field.
Donovan Casey occupies cell No. 92, sandwiched between William Clifford “Bill” “Cliff” Case (1914, Brooklyn Tip-Tops, Federal League) and Joe Chabek (1915, Brooklyn Dodgers, National League). And on the far right side of the sheet, Hinman has tidbits for a handful of players, like …
Died while in military service during World War I.
Had won a contest that enabled him to travel with Sox as a player.
Middleweight boxing champ of the U.S. Navy.
Was shot and killed on June 15, 1911 by a jealous husband.
Died in famous Duluth Dukes bus crash in 1948. He was the team’s manager & bus driver.
For Casey, though, there are no additional notes, so here goes: Born and raised in Stratford, New Jersey, he played at Boston College before the Dodgers drafted him in the 20th round in 2017. Ever since pro scouts came around, his only goal was to make enough to pay off his student loans, which he did with his signing bonus. After that, Casey figured, everything else would be extra. He had nothing to lose.
Still, once he started climbing the Dodgers’ system, he wanted the majors more than anything. Then, in July 2021 — five years ago this summer — Casey was one of four players acquired by the Nationals in the Max Scherzer-Trea Turner trade. If there were obituaries for every baseball career, this would be in the first few lines of his, if not right there at the top. But the sport also took him to Cape Cod and Ogden, Utah. Rancho Cucamonga, California, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Surprise, Arizona, to play in the Arizona Fall League; Harrisburg, Rochester and Wilmington to play for the Nats’ minor league teams; and then York, Pennsylvania, and Monterrey to play just a bit longer at the end.
And, yes, it took him to Pittsburgh and D.C. for those five days in 2022. They are not part of Major League Baseball’s official record, at least in the sense that he has no official stats. But that they happened can be confirmed by a simple fact: Donovan Casey was there.
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“You had a dream as a kid to get to the big leagues and you got to the big leagues,” Casey, 30, married and a father of two, said this summer. “My wife says it all the time: ‘You did it. You got called up. Who the hell cares?’ And I don’t know, the way I look at it is …”
He hit pause for a few seconds. A stream of consciousness slowed down to a trickle.
“... you can play the what-ifs all you want …”
“ … but …”
“… you know … “
“ … so much of this shit is out of your control.” Another pause. “And there were so many times I wanted to quit.”Another pause. “But instead I kept going, like, what’s one more day?”
***
CASEY HAS NEVER BEEN able to sit still. When he was a kid, he threw a ball against the house so much that there’s no more mortar between the bricks. When a handful of teams were interested in drafting him as a pitcher, he couldn’t imagine sitting for days between each appearance, waiting with nothing else to do. And when the Nationals traded for him in 2022, Casey wanted to drive straight from Tulsa to Harrisburg, which was a solid plan except for that his wife wouldn’t have it. They spent one night in a hotel to split up the 18-hour trip.
“He’s just like that,” his wife, Mary, said. “He was so antsy to get there and get going.”
Which was also why, during those five days with the Nationals, Casey’s family kept reacting to false alarms. While everyone else in the stands watched the games, they were watching him, looking for any sign he might be going in. When he unzipped his warmup jacket in Pittsburgh, his friends, a rowdy crew from high school, perked up. When he stretched his legs in the late innings, his wife hoped it meant he was about to pinch-run.
But on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at PNC Park, he remained on the bench. On Monday in D.C., it rained and a series opener with the Diamondbacks was postponed. There would be a doubleheader Tuesday. That, Casey figured, was when he would make his debut. It had to be, right? They would play 18 innings in one day, which meant there weren’t just two games he could start, but double the number of chances to pinch-hit, pinch-run or sub in on defense.
Then the first game came and went. Then, before the second game, Manager Dave Martinez put out the lineup and Casey’s name wasn’t on it. He went straight to the weight room and started lifting. Heavy, too, with extra reps in every set.
“I was in there thinking: What am I even doing here?” Casey recalled. “I had to blow off a lot of steam.”
The next day, Casey felt a weird vibe from the moment he arrived at Nationals Park. There is a certain, unexplainable energy in clubhouses when someone is getting sent down to the minors. In this case, that someone was him. Sean Doolittle, the team’s closer, was going to the injured list. And since the Nationals wanted to add two relievers in his place, they optioned Casey to AAA Rochester.
While Casey packed up his locker in a near-empty clubhouse, Doolittle walked over for a bit of encouragement. Hugging Casey, Doolittle said he would see him soon. He told Casey he’d be back.
“Yeah,” Casey agreed. “I’ll be back.”
***
THE ROAD TO LEHIGH VALLEY, Pennsylvania, foreshadowed the hard road ahead. When the Nationals demoted Casey, he had two options: Wait to travel the next morning to Lehigh Valley, where Rochester was in the middle of a series. Or leave that night with a drive provided by the team.
Casey chose to jet as soon as possible. Again, same as ever, he wanted to get there and get going. About two hours after leaving D.C., the driver asked if they could make a pit stop for caffeine. Casey was cool with it, of course, but after they got back in the car at a roadside gas station, the engine wouldn’t start. Casey made the last leg in an Uber.
Once he was back in Rochester’s lineup, he struggled to find a rhythm. He hit .172 in May with 29 strikeouts. In June, in a road game against the St. Paul Saints, he dove for a flyball and landed awkwardly on his right shoulder. When he went to throw the ball in, he could barely heave it 10 feet. He missed the next two weeks. At that point, he was also still feeling the effects of offseason surgery for a double hernia. When his parents visited Rochester that summer, Casey says they watched him “bawl my eyes out.” Sitting across from them, he would ask the universe what was happening, what he was doing wrong. In late-night voice memos to Mary, he would tell her, through thick tears, that he was not fast enough, not strong enough, not a good enough hitter. But he always finished by saying he wasn’t ready to stop.
“I was worried it would damage his drive,” Troy, Casey’s father, said. “I think it made him feel like ‘I worked my ass off and it still wasn’t enough.’ And then you have that attitude in your mind, that thought in your head, and I don’t think you perform as well after you’ve been let down. But I was very proud that he just kept working no matter what. Not surprised, but proud.”
One weekend in 2022, during a particularly rough stretch in Casey’s head, Mary drove the seven hours from Boston to Rochester because she felt like he needed her. She bought a ticket in the outfield, right behind where he was playing. And once he noticed her, when she saw the look of relief on his face, she knew she was right.
Baseball is one giant lesson of how to deal with failure. What’s not included, at least not specifically, is how to deal with the pressure of joining a new team in a massive trade, then never getting your chance despite sitting an arm’s length from it for close to a week.
In 2023, the year after his brush with the major leagues, there were times Casey felt a panic attack coming on whenever he got near a batting cage. He worked nonstop with a mental skills coach. When the Nationals asked if he wanted to try pitching in the second half of the season, he was relieved to drop his bat for a while. He wound up throwing one inning in AA, retiring all three batters he faced. But after that season, the Nats released him and he floated into the baseball abyss. No MLB teams called over the winter. In the spring, when Casey was still without a job, his agent raised the idea of playing indie ball in York, Pennsylvania, which had always been an absolute no in Casey’s mind.
But now, well, what the heck. And York wouldn’t just restore his love for baseball, it would lead to a short reunion with the Dodgers, who signed Casey for 30 games with AA Tulsa toward the end of 2024. That was it, though, as far as playing in the states. To make a bit more money, he spent some time in the Mexican League, which was fine, workable, until he spent a Christmas away from Donovan Jr., his firstborn. FaceTime was no longer cutting it. Casey went home.
***
FOR THE LONGEST TIME, ever since Casey and Troy drove from Jersey to Georgia in a red Corvette, hopping from showcase to showcase, hoping the right college coach would show up, home was any place with a batter’s box and outfield grass.
But now it’s Rutland, Vermont, which is near Mary’s family and Donovan’s new job. He works in manufacturing at a GE Aerospace facility. Most mornings, he’s out of the house early for a 7 a.m. shift, leaving before Mary, little Donovan and their newborn son, Callan, are awake. But if there’s overtime to pick up, he usually jumps at it, stretching his shifts from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m., his alarm going off at 2:15.
Once there, he assesses whether individual blades can keep moving down an assembly line that will eventually result in an airplane part. If it’s off by even a thousandth of an inch— or a thou, as they say — it’s a scrap. Casey used to measure his entire life in balls, strikes and the steps to first base. Now the day passes one thou at a time.
“Was I a failure as a human being? No,” Casey said, reflecting on the final years of his baseball career. “But I just felt like I was because I was basing everything off the results of my job. That was my identity for the longest time. I needed something else.”
Dad, it turns out, has been a good alternative. Husband, too. After work, he and Donovan Jr., who’s 3, often play Whiffle ball in the backyard. They each have a popsicle once they’re finished. Some nights, if there’s still time before dinner, they head to the store and buy a matchbox car.
It’s not what Casey ever pictured for himself, but that’s only because he never got past baseball, past the next game, past the madcap chase of an almost impossible dream. But it’s nice, he’s finding, being there for dinner, watching his kids grow up in person instead of through a screen. And when Donovan Jr. and Callan go to sleep, he and Mary can sit around and talk, which used to be impossible to schedule between noon and midnight.
If, for some reason, baseball comes up, if they start riffing on what could have been and how to define Donovan Casey, Mary doesn’t budge: Her husband is a big leaguer, once and forever. His dad, his mom, his former coaches, his longtime trainer — they all agree, of course. In April of 2022, someone decided that Casey should be on the Washington Nationals’ roster. They made the necessary calls. Casey got the uniform. His name was on the lineup card, five times over, no matter that it was near the bottom with the other subs.
Casey, though, doesn’t see it that way. When he Googles his name, which he still does sometimes, there’s a blank space where there should be at least one stat — a strikeout or homer or a single game played. He’s never cut corners, doesn’t plan to start now. But the point, he says, is that he doesn’t need the label of big leaguer to be proud of his career. Turns out baseball is a lesson in that, too.
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