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T EI've spent way too much time this morning trying to determine the answer to this question. I've got a ticket stub from Shea, July 24 1965 along with scorecard and a wraparound Old Timer's Day promo lineup. I was just about to list it on ebay when...
When I was looking at all this, it suddenly rang a bell-I remembered that Casey (who I met a couple of times, he was in person the same character he was in print) broke his hip after-hours either the night before or after Old Timer's Day and had to retire. I was surprised how difficult it was to verify via Google.
The scorecard is from the date, which I was able to verify, since it was filled in (Mets lost to Phils and Jim Bunning, who came eerily close to matching his Perfect Game against the Mets the year before, allowing only 3 baserunners) using Baseball Almanac online-what a great resource! Still, there was a great deal of misinformation I had to wade through to determine when exactly ole Casey broke his hip.
Out there in the internets, there is confusion about when Old Timer's Day fell that year. And there is confusion as to the exact date Casey retired. The first date I saw for his retirement was July 24, meaning he would have had to have broken his hip the night before. But the wrap-around Old Timer's program I have clearly gives the date as 7-24. There were many old-timers there, like Zach Wheat, whom Casey had actually played with, so I think what happened was Casey and the boys hit Toots Shor's place and made merry until the mean old sidewalk reached up and smacked Casey down.
Anyway, if you've made your way through all the above verbiage to this point, can you help a poor orphan along by sharing any knowledge you might have about said above events?
-Tom McM