Title: “The Mighty Casey”
Original transmission date: June 17 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Robert Parrish and Alvin Ganzer
Starring: Jack Warden as McGarry[2]
Robert Sorrells as Casey[2]
Abraham Sofaer as Dr. Stillman[2
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Robotics, sports, gambling, cheating, doing Trollheart's head in!
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: C
Serling's opening monologue
What you're looking at is a ghost, once alive but now deceased. Once upon a time, it was a baseball stadium that housed a major league ball club known as the Hoboken Zephyrs. Now it houses nothing but memories and a wind that stirs in the high grass of what was once an outfield, a wind that sometimes bears a faint, ghostly resemblance to the roar of a crowd that once sat here. We're back in time now, when the Hoboken Zephyrs were still a part of the National League, and this mausoleum of memories was an honest-to-Pete stadium. But since this is strictly a story of make believe, it has to start this way: once upon a time, in Hoboken, New Jersey, it was tryout day. And though he's not yet on the field, you're about to meet a most unusual fella, a left-handed pitcher named Casey.
Oh crap no! Not baseball! Even worse than boxing, worse than jazz, worse than most things I can think of. Sigh. All right then, personal prejudices to one side. Let’s get this thing started.
A crappy baseball team (no I don’t mean that; they really are useless, worst in the wor - ah, country) are looking for a new catcher, and find one in a strange tall man who seems to have a grip of iron. He’s brought to the field by a Doctor Stillman, and seems to almost have to be directed what to do by the doctor. Of course he’s a robot, which the doctor confides to the coach, and which the kid, the robot, Casey, amply demonstrates by his prowess at baseball. Of course the team suddenly start winning all their games, but then Casey gets “beaned” (takes a ball to the head? Don’t ask me, ask Wiki - it doesn’t hate baseball like I do. No, it doesn’t know either, or perhaps care. Let’s assume that’s right) and has to be taken to hospital.
While there, obviously, his true nature comes out and the doctor examining him says he’ll have to report this to the baseball commission, who, not surprisingly, take a dim view of any team employing a robot. Well,. It’s hardly fair, is it, and surely against the rules. Then Doctor Stillman says, if a lack of a heart is the problem, as the baseball commissioner says it is, then he can give Casey a heart. With his new heart, Casey returns but now he can’t endanger the other team; he feels compassion and so is no longer any use as a pitcher.
Trollheart’s note: Jesus Christ on gluten free toast with marmalade! Get me OUT of here!
Serling's closing monologue
Once upon a time, there was a major league baseball team called the Hoboken Zephyrs, who, during the last year of their existence, wound up in last place and shortly thererafter wound up in oblivion. There's a rumor, unsubstantiated, of course, that a manager named McGarry took them to the West Coast and wound up with several pennants and a couple of world championships. This team had a pitching staff that made history. Of course, none of them smiled very much, but it happens to be a fact that they pitched like nothing human. And if you're interested as to where these gentlemen came from, you might check under 'B' for Baseball - in The Twilight Zone
The Resolution
I’m too depressed to even comment here. Jesus - well, you know the rest.
The Moral
Don’t give a robot a heart.
Themes
Robotics - only I think the second time we’ve heard of robots, since the female robot in “The Lonely”, and again some sort of moralising about how emotions kill them. Very interestingly, the coach here - Jack Warden - is the same actor that played the man marooned on the asteroid in that episode, Corry. So he’s been involved with both the robots in the series so far. Sport of course is the other theme, bloody baseball - making this again the second sport-themed one, following on from “The Big Tall Wish”, and I guess cheating (for make no mistake, that’s what it is) can also be considered a theme here.
And isn't that...?
Jack Warden (1920 - 2006)
An impressive list of film credits, including iconic movies such as
From Here to Eternity, 12 Angry Men, Heaven Can Wait, All the President’s Men and
Shampoo, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, as he was for
Heaven Can Wait. On television he starred in the series
NYPD (but not Blue),
Crazy Like a Fox, Jigsaw John and
The Bad News Bears.
Robert Sorrels (1930 - 2019)
This is a new one. Guy was convicted of a double murder and jailed in 2005, died in prison. Interestingly, some of the movies he appeared in included
All Fall Down, Ride to Hangman’s Tree, Death of a Gunfighter and his final movie,
Nowhere to Run.
Abraham Sofaer (1986 - 1988)
Played Joseph of Arimathea in
The Greatest Story Ever Told, was in
Quo Vadis? and also guested on episodes of
Star Trek, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and
The Outer Limits.
Questions, and sometimes, Answers
Oh so many. How did a man in the 1960s manage to build a perfectly humanoid robot, and then give it - not an approximation of a heart, we’re told, but a real human one - when we can’t even begin to come close to that sort of technology in the twenty-first century? Maybe the guy was an alien. Who knows? Or cares?
Useless factoid:
This is the only time (so far) I’ve seen two different directors work on an episode.
Personal Notes
My own hatred for and antipathy towards baseball aside, this has to be one of my least favourite episodes. It’s just so stupid. Look, I’m all for suspending my disbelief, but this is asking too much.
On a more sombre note, it seems the role of the manager was originally to have been played by another actor, Paul Douglas, but on the day shooting ended he passed away, had been sick all the time he had been filming. Serling decided apparently this cast a cloud over what was meant to be a frivolous little happy episode, and recast the role. Now, I’m not saying that was the wrong thing to do, but I feel it was a little unfair to take the man’s final performance and consign it to the cutting-room floor. I wonder what he would have wanted? This is why there are two directors, as mentioned above - the original one, Ganzer, was not available for the reshoot. I don’t know if this is unique to The Twilight Zone, but I haven’t heard of two directors before.