Living for the Game

One man’s story of his personal struggle and how baseball has helped him cope

Cassady, who was born three months premature and diagnosed with cerebral palsy as an infant, is the official scorekeeper for the Wine Country Baseball League in Sonoma County, CA. Photos by Matt Hanlon

By Matt Hanlon

A quick first glance may tell you that the wiry man behind the scorer’s table is just a weathered baseball scorekeeper. Armed with his trusty number two pencils, a thick blue scorebook and a glossy, silver pencil sharpener, he keeps a meticulous book filled with the pitch by pitch record of each Wine Country Baseball game, accurate right down to the time of first pitch and the game time weather conditions.

He may look every inch the epitome of a run-of-mill, seasoned scorekeeper, but look beneath the dusty cowboy hat and well-worn glasses, past the fragile frame and the twinkling, blue eyes and you will find that Skip Cassady Junior’s story isn’t quite so by the book.

“There’s not enough that I can say about him,” said his brother Rob, 36. “He just has a huge heart, he’s dedicated to sports—basketball, football, baseball, you name it… And he’s just a wonderful, caring person.”

The Guerneville resident follows nearly every sport religiously. He travels to every game he can to keep score for his former high school, El Molino, and treks around Sonoma County several times a week as an official scorekeeper for the Wine Country Baseball league.

Following sports with such vigor is not an easy task for Cassady. He suffers from cerebral palsy, a condition causing physical disability and loss of motor skills that, for Cassady, makes walking virtually impossible without crutches.

Having cerebral palsy makes daily activities a struggle. But Cassady has no complaints. If anything, he’s grateful, considering all he’s made it through.

 “Things could have been worse,” he said. “I could have been in a wheelchair not being able to walk at all. I’m sure I would have able to contribute in other areas, but I wouldn’t have been able to communicate with people as well as I do.”

Cassady was scheduled to be born on April 26. Instead, he was born on February 2, almost three months premature.

He weighed just two pounds when he was born and had a fifty percent chance of living, doctors said.

For Cassady, surviving such odds is part of the reason that he regards each new day with the sort of youthful delight you’d find in an eight-year-old kid.

Disability was a painful challenge in childhood

But the difficulties didn’t stop there.

When Cassady was 15, he was hospitalized at Shriner’s hospital for disabled children in San Francisco because his legs were interfering with each other when he walked, causing him to fall down.

At Shriner’s he had surgery in which they tried to realign his misaligned hips. But when they started the surgery, they realized that the bones were so badly shaped that they had to break them and reset them.

As a result, he spent three long months in a cast up to his chest.  Cassady was so skinny that when the cast rubbed up against his sides it became incredibly painful.

The cast eventually got taken off. But the scars on his sides remain, serving as painful reminders of the three-month ordeal.

“I really couldn’t do much of anything and I couldn’t really move,” he said, with a slight grimace. “They had a big long bar going across where my legs were so that I couldn’t move at all.”

He still remembers the painful experience of when the nurses changed his casts midway through the process.

“They took that first cast off and put me into another one,” he said. “And when they were in the process of doing that one, they were using the circular saw, they cut into my right ankle. I wasn’t knocked out. I definitely felt it. It isn’t something that I’d want to remember but that’s just the way it goes.”

Unfortunately for the then teenage Cassady, leaving the hospital didn’t leave the pain behind.

“I was still in a lot of pain for probably the next year,” he said. “I didn’t fully recover until my sophomore year of high school. It took quite a while for me to be myself again, because of all the pain and all the physical stuff, and rehab.

Cassady’s physical pain was amplified by his grandmother’s untimely death immediately after the surgery.

“My second day of my fresh year my grandfather on my mother’s side passed away,” he said, still visibly affected by the memory. “There was a lot of physical and emotional pain….Looking back on it now I probably would have asked to take (my freshman) year off  so I could get my mind better. But it was what it was and I tried to make the best of it.”

The surgery’s memory remains a scar across the Cassady’s childhood. But like with all things, he treats it with a smile and a touch of reassurance.

“I’d say it was a success to a degree,” he said. “My parents and I were all hoping that I’d be able to walk again without assistance but that’s never really happened. My legs are still far enough apart that they work”

Sports served as a playful escape

After dealing with so much hardship so early in his life, sports have always served as an outlet for Cassady’s frustrations. While the disability has restricted his ability to play, it hasn’t held back his passion, or any lack of effort.

He recalls his parents yelling at him as a kid because he would spend hours playing in his living room playing with a wiffle ball or Nerf basketball.

When he was in sixth grade, against the advice of his parents and teachers, he tried out for the school’s flag football team. To their surprise, he made the team.

“I always tried to play sports as much as I could even with my disability,” he said. “In sixth grade I was the center and I had to hike the ball a different way than a normal center would have. I would get down on my knees sideways facing the side and then lateral it back to the quarterback.

For Cassady, the experience was more than about being the best. Being on the team was enough.

“I usually got to play one series of each half but I didn’t get to play a whole lot,” he said. “But for me it was more about representing my school then about winning or losing. I just wanted to be on a team playing with my friends.”

And when Cassady could not be on the field he was on the sidelines, stat book in hand. He began taking basketball statistics when he was in sixth grade at games for the Guerneville Elementary school team.

When he entered his freshman year at El Molino High School he began doing stats for the high school team, and aside from the time spent in Shriner’s, he never stopped. This year will be Cassady’s 32^nd year consecutive year as El Molino’s basketball statistician.

He started doing baseball statistics a few years later and continues to keep the scorebook and announce at every baseball game for El Molino. You can also hear him announcing at the freshman and junior varsity football games.

Cassady’s tireless contributions to El Molino Athletics have not gone unnoticed. Last year, he was inducted to the El Molino Athletic Hall of Fame and a plaque was hung up on the wall of the basketball gym.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone with as much enthusiasm as he has for baseball,” said Brett Williams, a catcher for the Oakville Aces, El Molino grad and former little leaguer coached by Cassady. “That guy is dedicated, that’s really the best way to describe it… I think he was at every one of my junior varsity and varsity baseball games in high school”

Cassady has a long history of giving back to his community. He coached little league for 15 years in Guerneville, although he stepped away after he saw all the politics that had begun to envelop between coaches and parents in little league.

“I haven’t done that for about 6 years because of all the negative attitudes from the parents and all the little league politics from the board,” he said. “Maybe one day I’ll go back and coach again but I don’t like all the all politics that go with it. It would have to be the right situation for me to come back.

“I enjoy helping kids and being around kids. That part of it I do miss. It’s real sad because it shouldn’t be that way. I think you should let (the kids) play and have fun and if things work out then you can give them all the avenues that they can go through.”

Cassady decided to quit coaching out of frustration. Not because of the difficulty of coaching, but because of how competitive the parents have become.

Cassady still a kid at heart

As someone who has spent his whole life dreaming of being out on the field, Cassady knows first hand how precious the joy of a simple game, such as baseball, can be. Sharing that joy with kids every day, not winning championships, is the real reason he misses coaching.

“I enjoyed coaching the kids, I just enjoy being around them,” he said. “And when they face some adversity they need to realize that things aren’t always going to go their way. I ‘m not jealous that they can play baseball or anything but I just want to make them realize that it could all be gone tomorrow.

“I just wanted them to have fun and not be pressured when they play. You want to win but they still have a game to play and tomorrow you might get 3 hits and win the game for your team whereas yesterday you struck out 3 times and made 2 errors or something. You need to stay positive because you never know what may come day by day.”

Cassady is the type of person who is never stops being a kid. For the longtime scorekeeper, having cerebral palsy makes thing difficult, but doesn’t diminish his youthful spirit.

“I’m still a kid at heart, its just part of life’s cycle I guess,” he said. “Things could have been worse. I could have been in a wheel chair not being able to walk at all…The biggest thing that I try and do is I joke about myself a lot and that kind of eases my pain. And I like having fun with people and I hope they appreciate what I try and do. Sometimes I don’t always say the politically correct thing but, heck, I don’t like politics in the first place.”

Cassady is single and has no kids of own but he is the proud uncle of four. Cassady has no problems with the life he leads and cherishes the time he spends with his nieces and nephews.

Wine Country Baseball came at the right time for Cassady

Cassady has worked a variety of office jobs throughout his life, but for the past few years has been unemployed. Living off disability, things had begun to look bleak for Cassady.

Then one day he read about the Wine Country Baseball league in the paper and emailed several of the league officials. Two weeks later he heard back from the commissioner Garrett Hoelscher and was given the job of the head league scorekeeper.

The job couldn’t have been a better fit, or at a better time, for the baseball enthusiast.

“I’m forever grateful to Garrett and Howard (Leonhardt, league founder) for giving me the opportunity,” he said. “Without Wine Country Baseball, I don’t know where I’d be right now. I’d probably be pretty close to being homeless, that’s how desperate I am. But I should be okay for awhile now. I’m very thankful for that.”

Cassady is not one to look too far into the future, but he hopes that the league’s early success continues as the quality of play only continues to improve.

“I really love baseball when there is a beautiful flow and rhythm to the game,” he said, with admiration. “I think the play in wine country league has been pretty good overall but I still see a lot of room for improvement. Basic fundamentals need to be tightened up.

“I have a certain standard when I watch baseball. I think that’s why sometimes I’m a bit harsh when I make a certain scoring decision. I just have certain standards and I expect them to be met. But I hope we all get an opportunity to come back and work together and try and make the league better, and do what we can.”

Not many people gush over their jobs the way Cassady does about his. But then again, there aren’t many people who love baseball as much as Cassady either.

He has quickly become a fixture at Wine Country Baseball games where he can be heard cracking jokes to his fellow scorekeepers and nearby fans.

“I just try and have fun and try and get along with everybody,” he said. “I’m just thankful to be alive. I love what I’m doing… It’s not about the money it’s about the friendship and the people that you meet and get to know and I think that’s what makes it all that more special.”

Regardless of where the league is next year, rest assured Cassady will be there with pencil and scorebook in hand to record every play on the diamond.

You may just hear him crack a joke about a bad swing, or discuss his not-so-secret fondness for Dolly Parton. If your lucky, you’ll see him dance in between innings, with a crutch clenched between his teeth and his arms swinging wildly.

Then again, what would you expect from a 48-year old kid who loves baseball? Ask him about still being a kid after all these years, and he’ll reply quite simply that he has nothing to lose.

“Being premature when I was born, I feel like I’ve already won,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I’m playing with house money.”

Cassady is known to show his humorous side in between innings of Wine Country Baseball League games.

Matt Hanlon is a freelance writer and beat writer for the Wine Country Baseball League. Contact him at mhanlon@uoregon.edu.