Total Baseball (1994 Edition)/Total_Baseball_1994_Edition_Creative_Multimedia_1994.iso/dp/0005/00051.txt

Text File | 1993-12-24 | 36KB | 596 lines

$Unique_ID{BAS00051}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Casey at the Bat:  A Ballad of the Republic}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{
Hall, Donald}
$Subject{Casey Thayer poem poems poet poets Rice McDonald}
$Log{}

Total Baseball:  The Players


Casey at the Bat:  A Ballad of the Republic

Donald Hall


     A century ago, on June 3, 1888, a twenty-five-year-old Harvard graduate,
one-poem poet Ernest Lawrence Thayer, published "Casey at the Bat" in the
pages of the San Francisco Examiner.  I suppose it's the most popular poem in
our country's history, if not exactly in its literature.  Martin Gardner
collected twenty-five sequels and parodies to print in his prodigy of
scholarship, The Annotated Casey at the Bat (1967; rev. 1984).  Will the next
Casey bat clean-up in a St. Petersburg Over-Ninety Softball League?  Perhaps,
instead, we will hear of a transparent Casey on an Elysian diamond, shade
swinging the shadow of a bat while wraith pitcher uncoils phantom ball--or
spheroid, I should say.
     The author of this people's poem was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts:
gentleman and scholar, son of a mill owner.  At Harvard he combined scholastic
and social eminence, not always feasible on the banks of the Charles.  A
bright student of William James in philosophy, he graduated magna cum laude
and delivered the Ivy Oration at graduation.  On the other hand, he was editor
of the Lampoon, for which traditional requirements are more social than
literary; he belonged to Fly, a club of decent majesty.  It is perhaps not
coincidence, considering Victorian Boston's social prejudices, that Thayer's
vainglorious mock hero carries an Irish name.
     After his lofty graduation, Thayer drifted about in Europe. One of his
Harvard acquaintances had been young William Randolph Hearst, business manager
of the Lampoon, expelled from Harvard for various pranks while Thayer was
pulling a magna.  The disgraced young Hearst was rewarded by his father with
editorship of the San Francisco Examiner, where he offered Thayer work as
humorous columnist.  By the time "Casey" appeared, Thayer had left California
to return to Worcester, where he later managed a mill for his father and
studied philosophy in his spare time.
     He received five dollars for "Casey" and never claimed reward for its
hundreds of further printings.  By all accounts, "Casey's" author found his
notoriety problematic.  As with all famous nineteenth-century recitation
pieces--"The Night Before Christmas," "Backward Turn Backward O Time in Thy
Flight"--other poets claimed authorship, which annoyed Thayer first because he
did write it, and second because he wasn't especially proud of it.  There was
the additional annoyance that old ballplayers continually asserted themselves
the original Casey of the ballad:  Thayer insisted that he made the poem up.
The author of "Casey at the Bat" died in Santa Barbara in 1940 without ever
doing another notable thing.
     The poem's biography is richer than the poet's:  At first "Casey" blushed
unseen, wasting its sweetness on the desert air, until an accident blossomed
it into eminence.  In New York, DeWolf Hopper, a young star of comic opera,
was acting in Prince Methusalem.  On August 15, 1888, management invited
players from the New York Giants and the Chicago White Stockings to attend a
performance, and Hopper gave thought to finding a special bit that he might
perform in the ballplayers' honor.  His friend the novelist Archibald
Clavering Gunter, recently returned from San Francisco, showed him a clipping
from the San Francisco Examiner.
     In Hopper's autobiography, he noted that when "[I] dropped my voice to
B-flat, below low C, at the 'multitude was awed,' I remember seeing Buck
Ewing's gallant mustachios give a single nervous twitch."  Apparently Hopper's
recitation left everyone in the house twitching with joy, and not only the
Giants' hirsute catcher.  For the rest of his life, Hopper repeated his
performance by demand, no matter what part he sang or played, doomed to recite
the poem (five minutes and forty seconds) an estimated ten thousand times
before his death in 1935.  As word spread from Broadway, the poem was
reprinted in newspapers across the country, clipped out, memorized, and
performed for the millions who would never hear De Wolf Hopper.  Eventually
the ballad was set to music, made into silent movies, and animated into
cartoons; radio broadcast it, there were recordings by Hopper and others, and
William Schuman wrote an opera called The Mighty Casey [premiere 1953].
     When he first recited the poem, Hopper had no notion who had written it.
Thayer had signed it "Phin.," abbreviating his college nickname of Phinny.
Editors reprinted the poem anonymously or made up a name that sounded
reasonable.  When Hopper played Worcester early in the 1890s, he met the
retiring Thayer--and poet recited poem for actor, as Hopper later reported,
without a trace of elocutionary ability.

     There are things in any society that we always knew. We do not remember
when we first heard about Ground Hog Day or Thirty Days Hath September.  Who
remembers first hearing "Casey at the Bat"?  Although I cannot remember my
original exposure, I remember many splendid renditions from early in my life
by the great ham actor of my childhood.  My New Hampshire grandfather, Wesley
Wells, was locally renowned for his powers of recitation--for speaking
pieces, as we called it.  He farmed bad soil in central New Hampshire:  eight
Holsteins, fifty sheep, a hundred chickens.  In the tie-up for milking,
morning and night, he leaned his bald head into warm Holstein ribs and recited
poems with me for audience; he kept time as his hands pulled blue milk from
long teats.  When he got to the best part, he let go the nozzles, leaned back
in his milking chair, spread his arms wide and opened his mouth in a great O,
the taught gestures of elocution.  He spellbound me as he set the line out on
the warm cowy air: "But there is no joy in Mudville--mighty Casey has struck
out!"  The old barn (with its whitewash over rough boards, with its spider
webs and straw, with its patched harness and homemade ladders and pitchforks
shiny from decades of hand labor) paused in its shadowy hugeness and applauded
again the ringing failure of the hero.
     If he had not recited it for me lately, I reminded him.  He recited a
hundred other poems also, a few from Whittier and Longfellow, but mostly from
newspapers by poets without names.  I don't suppose he knew "Ernest Lawrence
Thayer" or the history of the poem, but "Casey" itself was as solid as the
rocks of his fields.  The word that left Broadway and traveled was:  This poem
is good to say out loud.  Earlier, the same news traveled about Edgar Allan
Poe's "The Raven" and Bret Harte's "The Heathen Chinee."  Public schooling
once consisted largely of group memorization and recitation.  The New England
Primer taught theology and the alphabet together: "In Adam's fall / We sinned
all" through "Zacchaeus he / Did climb a tree / His Lord to see."  Less
obviously the Primer instilled pleasures of rhyme and oral performance.  When
we decided fifty and sixty years ago that rote memorization was bad teaching,
we threw out not only the multiplication table but also "Barbara Frietchie."
Recitation of verse was turned over to experts.
     Earlier, for two hundred years at least, recitation and performance took
center stage in the one-room schools; but it did not end there.  At schools,
recitation as performance--not merely to retain information--climbed toward
competitive speaking, elimination and reward on Prize Speaking Day, when the
athletes of elocution recited in contest before judges.  The same athletes did
not stop when school stopped, and recitation exfoliated into the adult world
as a major form of entertainment.  Hamlets and cities alike formed clubs
meeting weekly for mutual entertainment that variously included singing,
playing the violin and the piano, recitation, and political debate.  In the
country towns and villages, which couldn't afford to hire Mr. Hopper to
entertain them (nor earlier Mr. Emerson to instruct and inspire them),
citizens made their own Lyceums and Chautauquas.  In my grandfather's South
Danbury, New Hampshire, young people founded the South Danbury Debating and
Oratorical Society.  Twice a month they met for programs that began with
musical offerings and recitations, paused for coffee and doughnuts, and
concluded with a political debate.  "Resolved:  That the United States should
Cease from Territorial Expansion."
     While recitation thrived, the recitable poem became a way of entertaining
ideas and each other, of exposing or exercising public concerns.  Poetry in
the United States was briefly a public art.  But after the Great War came
cars, radios, and John Dewey; recitation departed, and poets have been blamed
ever since for losing their audience.  The blame is unfair, because the
connection between poetry and a mass audience was brief, nor did it work for
all poetry.  John Donne never had a great audience; neither did George Herbert
nor Andrew Marvell, nor in America Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson.  These
poets made poems with a fineness of language that required sophisticated
reading.
     All the same, some nineteenth-century poets wrote poems both popular and
fine--without being as popular as baseball or as fine as Gerard Manley
Hopkins.  This moment was the fragile age of elocution.  Many poets turned in
one direction to talk to the people, and in another to talk to the ages.
Longfellow's best work--the Divine Comedy sonnets, "The Jewish Cemetery at
Newport"--is dense, sophisticated, adult poetry of the second order.  But in
his nationalistic fervor he also wrote epics of the Republic's prehistory like
Evangeline, or lyrics of the common life like "The Village Blacksmith."
Making these poems, he made recitation pieces; without intending to, he wrote
poems for children and for entertainment.  When Whittier made "Barbara
Frietchie" in his abolitionist passion, he made willy-nilly a patriotic poem
for schoolkids to recite.  Meantime Walt Whitman--who had notions about
poetry for the people--went relatively unread as he went unrecited.  Mind you,
he showed he could turn his hand to the recitation piece:  "O Captain My
Captain" is poetically inferior to "Casey."
     The twin phenomena of recitation and the popular poem thrived in England
at the same time, and Macaulay's The Lays of Ancient Rome turned up in
American school readers and on prize-speaking days.  The public Tennyson,
laureate not melancholic, wrote verses often memorized for performance;
lyrical Wordsworth and bouncy Browning served as well.  There were many
English sources, even for "Casey at the Bat":  Thayer remembered reading W.S.
Gilbert's Bab Ballads before composing "Casey."
     At my school in the 1930s we memorized American poets:  Whitman for "O
Captain My Captain," Joaquin Miller's "Columbus," something by James Whitcomb
Riley.  The trajectory of the recitation piece, of which "Casey" is a late
honorable example, began its descent early.  James Whitcomb Riley scored hits
with "Little Orphant Annie" and others, but Riley was mostly hokum.  Then
there was Eugene Field, whose "Little Boy Blue" is gross sentimentality
accomplished with skill; then there is Ella Wheeler Wilcox; then there is
Edgar Lee Guest.  [The Canadian Robert Service is a late recitable anomaly.]
Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg were themselves performers who did not give
rise to performance in others; they led from recitation toward the poetry
reading.  There are poets today as sentimental and popular as Edgar Guest, but
they write free verse and no one recites them.
     The tradition of recitation survives only in backwaters, like Danbury,
New Hampshire.  If you come on Prize Speaking Day and sit in the school
cafeteria-gymnasium-assembly, a miniature elocutionist may break your heart
reciting "Little Boy Blue," or you may watch a rawboned young outfielder,
straight out of central casting, begin:  "The outlook wasn't brilliant for the
Mudville nine that day . . ."
     Among the thousands of pieces memorized and recited, few survive.  Why
"Casey at the Bat"?  For a hundred years this mock heroic ballad has lurked
alive at the edges of American consciousness.  It has endured past the culture
that spawned it.  When an artifact like this old clownish poem persists for a
century, surviving not only its moment but its natural elocutionary habitat,
there must be reasons.  There must be public reasons for public endurance.
     We might as well ask:  Why has baseball survived?  Neither the Black Sox
scandal nor the Crash nor two World Wars nor the National Football League have
ended the game of baseball.  Every year more people buy tickets to sit in
wooden seats over a diamond of grass--or in plastic seats over plastic grass,
as may be.  We need to ask:  Has baseball survived?  Casey's game pitted town
against town with five thousand neighbors watching.  Maybe the descendant of
Casey's game is industrial league softball played under the lights by teams
wearing rainbow acrylics.  These days when we speak of baseball we mostly mean
the Major Leagues, millionaire's hardball, where our box seats place us half a
mile from the symmetrical petro-chemical field.  Do we watch the game that
Mudville watched?
     Yes.
     As "Casey at the Bat" survives the culture of recitation, the game's
shape and import survive its intimate origins.  Not without change:  If the
five thousand ghosts of the Mudville crowd, drinking a Mississippi of blood to
turn solid, reconstituted themselves on a Friday night at Three Rivers Stadium
to witness combat between Cincinnati's team and Pittsburgh's, they would gape
in spiritual astonishment at the zircon light of a distant diamond under the
velvet darkness, at the pool-table green of imitation grass, at amenities of
Lite, at the wave, at the skin color of many players, at tight uniforms, and
at a scoreboard that shows moving pictures of what just happened.
     But in their ectoplasmic witness they would also observe the template of
an unaltered game.  They would watch a third baseman move to his right, a
second baseman flip underhand to a shortstop pivoting toward first for the
double play, and an outfielder charge a line drive while setting himself to
throw.  Above all, they would see a pitcher facing a batter late in the game
with men on base.  They would see a cleanup man approaching the batter's box
with defiance curling his lip.  "Casey at the Bat" survives--to begin
with--because it crystallizes baseball's moment, the medallion carved at the
center of the game, where pitcher and batter confront each other.

     There are other reasons, literary and historical.  When a poem is so
popular, one needs to quote Mallarme again, and observe that poems are made of
words.  "Casey's" language is a small, consistent, comic triumph of irony.
The diction is mock heroic, big words for small occasions:  When a few fans go
home in the ninth inning, they depart not in discouragement but "in deep
despair."  The remaining five thousand illustrate a learned illusion:  In his
Essay on Man, Alexander Pope wrote that, "Hope springs eternal in the human
breast. . ." and Thayer of course knew the source of his saw; but Pope, like
Shakespeare, is largely composed of book titles and proverbs:  Thayer uses
Pope not as literary allusion but as appeal to common knowledge by way of
common elevated sentiment.
     Elevation is fundamental:  Despite the flicker of hope, the crowd is a
"grim multitude"--a language appropriate to Milton's hell--and if the hero is
mocked, hero worshippers are twice mocked.  Thayer's poetic similes are
Homeric--as if Achilles faced Hector instead of Casey the pitcher; or if Casey
is not quite Achilles, at least he is Ajax.  Imagery of noise, loud in Homer
and his echo Virgil, rouses Thayer to exalted moments:  A yell "rumbled
through the valley, it rattled in the dell; / It knocked upon the mountain and
recoiled upon the flat . . ."  This yell is cousin to the "roar / Like the
beating of the stormwaves on a stern and distant shore."  It is noise again
when Thayer's crowd reacts to a called strike:  "'Fraud!' cried the maddened
thousands, and echo answered fraud . . ."  These days at Fenway Park the
bleacherites divide themselves for a rhythmic double chant, but they do not
say "Fraud."  When they feel polite they cry "less filling" and echo answers
"tastes great."
     Possibly crowds were not chanting "Fraud" in the late 1880s either.  It
was a major form of Victorian humor to elevate diction over circumstance.  Mr.
Micawber soared with paraphrastic euphemism to admit that he was in debt;
W.C. Fields was an orotund low-comedy grandson.  For a hundred years it was
witty or amusing to call kissing osculation, and to refer to a house as a
domicile.  If somebody missed our tone, we sounded pompous, but usually people
understood us:  When we enjoyed something common or vulgar (like baseball) we
could show a humorous affection for it, yet retain our superiority by calling
the ball a spheroid.
     This habit of language has not entirely disappeared, but more and more it
looks like an anglophile or academic tic.  The late poet and renowned advocate
of baseball, Marianne Moore, always talked this way, never more than when she
spoke of the game.  When she identified the Giants' pitcher, "Mr. Mathewson,"
she noted:  "I've read his instructive book on the art of pitching, and it's a
pleasure to note how unerringly his execution supports his theories."  Another
St. Louis poet was T.S. Eliot, born the same year as "Casey," and, like
Moore, expert in the humor of a polysyllabic synonym.  Eliot is the most
eminent poet influenced by "Casey at the Bat."  Old Possum's Book of Practical
Cats includes "Growltiger's Last Stand," conflation of Custer and Casey,
written in metrical homage and in allusion:  "Oh there was joy in Wapping when
the news flew through the land . . ."  Growltiger is a vicious fellow, racist
or at least nationalist ("But most to Cats of foreign race his hatred has been
vowed"), and loathed by felines of an Asian provenance.  Absorbed in romantic
adventure he is surrounded by a "fierce Mongolian horde," captured, and made
to walk the plank.
     The author of Four Quartets and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
grew up in the age of recitation; we could be certain that he knew "Casey"
even if "Growltiger" were not written in homage.  Like many poets he could
write high or low, wide or narrow; unlike some poets, when he wrote for
children he recognized that he was doing it.
     Mockery is "Casey's" point, with humor to soften it.  After the crowd
(which is us), the great Casey himself takes the brunt of our laughter.  His
name is the poem's mantra, repeated twenty-two times, often twice in a line.
As he puffs with vainglory, "Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled
Casey's lip."  The hero's role is written in the script of gesture.  After
five stanzas of requisite exposition, we catch sight of the rumored Casey in
the sixth stanza:  "There was ease in Casey's manner . . ."  By this phrase we
are captured and the double-naming locks us in:  "There was pride in Casey's
bearing and a smile on Casey's face."  We know the smile's message, and we
know how Casey doffs his cap.  Casey is Godlike:  "With a smile of Christian
charity . . ." he "stilled the rising tumult;" if we remember that this
metaphoric storm occurs at sea ("the beating of the stormwaves"), we may
understand that Casey's charity earns its adjective.

     And every time we hear "Casey at the Bat," the hero strikes out.  We
require this failure.
     Not all of us.  My grandfather, who was sanguine, always regretted that
Casey struck out.  He memorized the sequels and tried them all, especially
"The Volunteer."  In Clarence P. MacDonald's poem, printed in the San
Francisco Examiner in 1908, the home team plays with no bench; behind in the
game, it loses its catcher to an injury, and the captain calls for a
substitute from the stands:  A gray-headed volunteer finishes the game as
catcher and his home run wins the game in the ninth.  Besieged by teammates
and fans to reveal his identity, the weeping stranger proclaims:  "I'm mighty
Casey who struck out just twenty years ago."
     Wonderful.
     But it won't do.  None of the triumphant sequels will do.  None show the
flair of Thayer's ballad, its vigorous bumpety septameter and mostly
well-earned rhymes, or its consistently overplayed language.  Most important,
none celebrate failure:  Casey must strike out:  Casey's failure makes the
poem.
     When Thayer first published "Casey at the Bat" in 1888, it bore a
subtitle seldom reprinted:  "A Ballad of the Republic."  Once we lived in
heroic times:  once--and then again.  When we suffer wars and undertake
explorations we require heroes, and Jeb Stuart must gallop behind Union lines,
Lindbergh fly the Atlantic, Davey Crockett enter the wilderness alone,
Washington endure Valley Forge, the Merrimack attack the Monitor, Neil
Armstrong step on the moon, and U.S. stand for Ulysses S., Unconditional
Surrender, and the United States.
     The Civil War, which ripped the country apart, began the work of
stitching it together again.  (One small agent of integrity was baseball, as
blue and gray troops played the game at rest and even in prison camps, even
North against South, as legend tells us.)  For five years North and South
lived through the triumphs and disasters of heroes.  Although nameless boys
charged stone walls blazing with rifle fire, we concentrated our attention on
heroic leaders, from dandified cavalrymen to dignified generals.  Sons born to
veterans, late in the sixties and early in the seventies, were christened
Forrest, Jackson, Sherman, Grant, Lee, Bedford, Beauregard . . .
     But hero worship is dangerous and needs correction, especially in a
democracy if we will remain democratic.  To survive hero worship we mock our
heroes; if we don't, we become their victims.  Odysseus came home to slay the
suitors; Ulysses S. allowed them to fatten on our larder:  Heroic governance
became disaster as the triumphant General Grant turned into the ruinous
President.  Many other heroes struck out.  When the romantic vainglorious
George Custer, with his shoulder-length hair, made combat with Crazy Horse and
Sitting Bull in 1876, Growltiger walked the plank.  Affluence and corruption,
defeat and corruption bred irony.  Violence of reconstruction and violence of
anti-reconstruction eventually encouraged detachment from crowd passion.
     Whatever young Thayer had in mind as he wrote his "Ballad of the
Republic," 1888 was of course a presidential year.  We elected the mighty
Benjamin Harrison President, a former officer of the Union Army, who took the
job in a deal and installed as Secretary of State the notorious James G.
Blaine.  De Tocqueville stands behind this poem as much as Homer does.
Democracies choose figures to vote in and out of office--to argue over, to
ridicule:  We do not want gods or kings--that's why we crossed the ocean
west--but human beings, fallible like us.
     We pretend to forgive failure; really we celebrate it.  Bonehead Merkle
lives forever and Bill Mazeroski's home run fades in memory.  We fail, we all
fail, we fail all our lives.  The best hitters fail, two out of three at bats.
If from time to time we succeed, our success is only prelude to further
failure--and success' light makes failure darker still.  Triumph's pleasures
are intense but brief; failure remains with us forever, a featherbed, a
mothering nurturing common humanity.  With Casey we all strike out.  Although
Bill Buckner won a thousand games with his line drives and brilliant fielding,
he will endure in our memories in the ninth inning of the sixth game of a
World Series, one out to go, as the ball inexplicably, ineluctably, and
eternally rolls between his legs.

And now, the immortal Casey and his most worthy successors:


Casey at the Bat

A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair.  The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought if only Casey could but get a whack at that--
We'd put up even money now with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despis-ed, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred,
There was Johnnie safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped--
"That ain't my style," said Casey.  "Strike one," the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill him!  Kill the umpire!" shouted some one on the stand;
And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville--mighty Casey has struck out.

                              Ernest Lawrence Thayer


Casey's Revenge

There were saddened hearts in Mudville for a week or even more;
There were muttered oaths and curses--every fan in town was sore.
"Just think," said one, "how soft it looked with Casey at the bat,
And then to think he'd go and spring a bush league trick like that!"

All his past fame was forgotten--he was now a hopeless "shine."
They called him "Strike-Out Casey," from the mayor down the line;
And as he came to bat each day his bosom heaved a sigh,
While a look of hopeless fury shone in mighty Casey's eye.

He pondered in the days gone by that he had been their king,
That when he strolled up to the plate they made the welkin ring;
But now his nerve had vanished, for when he heard them hoot
He "fanned" or "popped out" daily, like some minor league recruit.

He soon began to sulk and loaf, his batting eye went lame;
No home runs on the score card now were chalked against his name;
The fans without exception gave the manager no peace,
For one and all kept clamoring for Casey's quick release.

The Mudville squad began to slump, the team was in the air;
Their playing went from bad to worse--nobody seemed to care.
"Back to the woods with Casey!" was the cry from Rooters' Row.
"Get some one who can hit the ball, and let that big dub go!"

The lane is long, some one has said, that never turns again,
And Fate, though fickle, often gives another chance to men;
And Casey smiled; his rugged face no longer wore a frown--
The pitcher who had started all the trouble came to town.

All Mudville had assembled--ten thousand fans had come
To see the twirler who had put big Casey on the bum;
And when he stepped into the box, the multitude went wild;
He doffed his cap in proud disdain, but Casey only smiled.

"Play ball!" the umpire's voice rang out, and then the game began.
But in that throng of thousands there was not a single fan
Who thought that Mudville had a chance, and with the setting sun;
Their hopes sank low--the rival team was leading "four to one."

The last half of the ninth came round, with no change in the score;
But when the first man up hit safe, the crowd began to roar;
The din increased, the echo of ten thousand shouts was heard
When the pitcher hit the second and gave "four balls" to the third.

Three men on base--nobody out--three runs to tie the game!
A triple meant the highest niche in Mudville's hall of fame;
But here the rally ended and the gloom was deep as night,
When the fourth one "fouled to catcher" and the fifth "flew out to right."

A dismal groan in chorus came; a scowl was on each face
When Casey walked up, bat in hand, and slowly took his place;
His bloodshot eyes in fury gleamed, his teeth were clenched in hate;
He gave his cap a vicious hook and pounded on the plate.

But fame is fleeting as the wind and glory fades away;
There were no wild and wooly cheers, no glad acclaim this day;
They hissed and groaned and hooted as they clamored:  "Strike him out!"
But Casey gave no outward sign that he had heard this shout.

The pitcher smiled and cut one loose--across the plate it sped;
Another hiss, another groan.  "Strike one!" the umpire said.
Zip!  Like a shot the second curve broke just below the knee.
"Strike two! the umpire roared aloud; but Casey made no plea.

No roasting for the umpire now--his was an easy lot;
But here the pitcher whirled again--was that a rifle shot?
A whack, a crack, and out through the space the leather pellet flew,
A blot against the distant sky, a speck against the blue.

Above the fence in center field in rapid whirling flight
The sphere sailed on--the blot grew dim and then was lost to sight.
Ten thousand hats were thrown in air, ten thousand threw a fit,
But no one ever found the ball that mighty Casey hit.

O, somewhere in this favored land dark clouds may hide the sun,
And somewhere bands no longer play and children have no fun!
And somewhere over blighted lives there hangs a heavy pall,
But Mudville hearts are happy now, for Casey hit the ball.

                              Grantland Rice


Casey--Twenty Years Later

The Mudville team was desperate in that big championship game;
The chances were they'd bite the dust and kiss goodbye to fame;
Three men were hurt and two were benched; the score stood six to four.
They had to make three hard-earned runs in just two innings more.

"It can't be done," the captain said, a pallor on his face;
"I've got two pitchers in the field, a mutt on second base;
And should another man get spiked or crippled in some way,
The team would sure be down and out, with only eight to play.

"We're up against it anyhow as far as I can see;
My boys ain't hitting like they should and that's what worries me;
The luck is with the other side, no pennant will we win;
It's mighty tough!  There's nought to do but take it on the chin."

The eighth round opened; one, two, three--the enemy went down;
The Mudville boys went out the same, the captain wore a frown;
The first half of the ninth came round, two men had been called out,
When Mudville's catcher broke a thumb and could not go the route.

A deathly silence settled o'er the crowd assembled there.
Defeat, defeat was what all sensed!  Defeat hung in the air!
With only eight men in the field 'twould be a gruesome fray;
Small wonder that the captain cursed the day he learned to play.

"Lend me a man to finish with," he begged the other team;
"Lend you a man?" the foe replied; "My boy, you're in a dream!
 We want that dear old pennant, pal."  And then, a final jeer--
"There's only one thing you can do--call for a volunteer."

The captain stood and pondered in a listless sort of way;
He never was a quitter and wouldn't quit today!
"Is there within the grandstand here"--his voice rang loud and clear--
"A man who has the sporting blood to be a volunteer?"

A sense of death now settled o'er that sickly multitude;
Was there a man among them with such recklessness imbued?
The captain stood with cap in hand, and hopeless was his glance,
And then a big old man cried out, "Say, Cap, I'll take a chance."

Into the field he bounded with a step both firm and light;
"Give me the mask and mitt," he said; "let's finish up the fight.
The game is not beyond recall; a winner you have found;
Although I'm ancient, I'm a brute and muscular and sound."

His hair was sprinkled here and there with little streaks of gray;
Around his eyes and on his brow a bunch of wrinkles lay.
The captain smiled despairingly and slowly turned away.
"Why, he's all right," one rooter yelled.  "C'mon, Cap, let him play!"

"All right, go on," the captain sighed; the stranger turned around,
Took off his coat and collar, too, and threw them on the ground.
The humor of the situation seemed to hit them one and all,
And as the stranger donned his mask, the umpire yelled, "Play ball!"

Three balls the pitcher at him hurled, three balls of lightning speed;
The oldster caught them all with ease and did not seem to heed.
Each ball had been pronounced a strike, the side had been put out,
And as he walked in towards the bench, he heard the rooters shout.

One Mudville boy went out on strikes, and one was killed at first;
The captain saw his hopes all dashed, and gnashed his teeth and cursed.
But the next man smashed a double and the fourth man swatted clear;
Then, in a thunder of applause, up came the volunteer.

His feet were planted in the earth, he swung a warlike club;
The captain saw his awkward pose and softly whispered, "Dub!"
The pitcher looked at him and grinned, then heaved a mighty ball;
The echo of that fearful swat still lingers with us all.

High, fast and far that spheroid flew; it sailed and sailed away;
It ne'er was found, so it's supposed it still floats on today.
Three runs came in, the pennant would be Mudville's for a year;
The fans and players gathered round to cheer the volunteer.

"What is your name?" the captain asked.  "Tell us your name," cried all,
And down the unknown's cheeks great tears and rivulets did fall.
For one brief moment he was still, then murmured soft and low:
"I'm mighty Casey who struck out--just twenty years ago!"

                              Clarence Patrick McDonald