Tim Wiles, research director for the Baseball Hall of Fame
from 1995 to 2014, annually portrays
the Mighty Casey in Cooperstown's baseball parade.
June 3, 1888: Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic appears in The Daily Examiner, the San Francisco newspaper that started the media empire of William Randolph Hearst. It becomes the most famous poem in American history. Not the best, but the most famous. Certainly, the most-recited, more than Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.
It is signed "Phin," and, for decades, speculation about the true identity of the author, that of the titular baseball player, and the location of its setting, abounded.
The author was easy enough to determine: "Phin" was short for "Phinney," a pen name used on The Harvard Lampoon, the humor magazine of Harvard University, by Ernest Lawrence Thayer. Born on August 14, 1863 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, outside Boston, and growing up in nearby Worcester, he and Hearst were friends at Harvard, and Hearst hired him as the Examiner's humor columnist.
After writing for Hearst for a few years, Thayer went back east, and ran his family's mills. He married, retired to Santa Barbara, California, and died on August 21, 1940.
I shall translate Thayer's Grover Cleveland/Victorian Era text for the early 21st Century reader:
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.
It's the bottom of the 9th inning at the Mudville ballpark, and the home team is trailing 4-2. Cooney grounds out, and so does Barrows. The Mudville team are down to their last out.
And where was Mudville? Holliston, about halfway between Boston and Worcester, has a neighborhood named Mudville, and the town claims to be the home of Casey and his team. The Thayer family owned a wool mill only 1 mile from the baseball field in this neighborhood.
But Stockton, California was known as Mudville prior to its incorporation in 1850, and Thayer had covered the California League for the Examiner, so he would have been to games of the Stockton Ports. Thayer wouldn't say, one way or the other, telling an interviewer years later, "The poem has no basis in fact."
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to the 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."
At the time, the stereotypical baseball player -- or "base-ballist," or just "ballist," in the lingo of the time -- was an Irishman of little education and modest means. All the names in the poem are Irish, as was Thayer himself.
But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a lulu, while the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey getting to the bat.
A "lulu" is an undesirable person. I'm not sure why calling someone a "cake" is bad, only that the next stanza calls Blake "the much despised." In modern slang, it could have been said, "And a slump had clutched the former, and the latter was a flake."
Jimmy Blake is the only player in the poem whose first name is mentioned. The name of the opposing pitcher, indeed that of his entire team, is never mentioned.
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despise-d, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.
That's pronounced "much-despise-ed." Now, Mudville are still down to their last out, but there's a runner on 3rd base, the tying run is at 2nd, and the winning run is at the plate.
Then from five thousand 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.
Now we know the attendance at this game: 5,000 people. Not a bad figure for a minor-league game, in any era. But "mountain"? And "valley"? Western Massachusetts has the Berkshires, a chain of the Appalachian Mountains, but Stockton is in the Sierra Nevada range, so this would seem to support Stockton as the location.
Who was Casey, and why did they have such confidence in him? It's been alleged that the character was based on the star of the Boston Beaneaters (the team known today as the Atlanta Braves), the hard-hitting, flamboyant catcher Mike "King" Kelly. Kelly himself was all too happy to claim the distinction, but he died in 1894 due to his poor personal habits, and Thayer always denied that Casey was based on Kelly, or any other particular player. Still, for decades to come, men came forward, claiming to have been the inspiration for "the Mighty Casey."
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.
I should think not. This may have been a time before uniform numbers and public-address systems, but in a ballpark with just 5,000 seats, everybody would have been close enough to see the batter's face, and to recognize their own team's players, especially its star player.
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.
Ted Williams, a Boston baseball legend of the mid-20th Century, who always claimed to have hated pitchers, would have been proud of Casey -- at least, at this moment.
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.
Apparently, the pitcher didn't put the ball where Casey wanted it, but it was still a strike.
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 someone on the stand;
and it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.
By 1888, yelling, "Kill the umpire!" over a perceived bad call was already a baseball cliché. And by "black with people," Thayer was clearly referring to the black derby hats and black coats that were in fashion at the time. He wasn't saying that the spectators were African-Americans. In 1888, at an all-white baseball game, only a very few fans would have been black.
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."
With occasional exceptions -- V in the film V for Vendetta comes to mind -- nobody calls a face a "visage" (pronounced "vih-SAHZH") anymore, but Casey's smiling face got the crowd to sit down and shut up. Why he didn't swing at the 2nd pitch, Thayer did not say.
"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.
Now, it appears that the crowd has turned on Casey himself: He, for not swinging at 2 called strikes, is the "fraud," not the umpire for calling the pitches strikes. But he quickly regains control of them, and they know he's not going to take a called strike 3. After all, Ángel Hernández won't umpire his first major league game for another 103 years.
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.
No explanation necessary. Thayer does not reveal the result of Casey's swing until the last line of the poem:
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.
The poem's success is often attributed to the surprise of the hero failing in the end. I don't know if this is the earliest "twist ending" in American literature, but it's easily the most famous one.
On August 14, 1888, the Chicago White Stockings (who would become the Cubs in 1903) beat the New York Giants, 4-2 at the original Polo Grounds in New York. This broke the 19-game winning streak of Giants pitcher Tim Keefe, who ended up in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
That night, players from both teams went to the Wallack Theatre, to watch the comic opera Prinz Methusalem. During the intermission, actor DeWolf Hopper came on stage, and, knowing that the ballists were in the auidence, melodramatically recited Casey at the Bat. The players joined everyone else in giving Hopper a tremendous ovation. This made the poem nationally famous, and Hopper would perform the poem over 10,000 times by his own estimation, prior to his death in 1935, living long enough to be recorded reciting it for a sound film. (From 1913 to 1922, he was married to actress Elda Furry, who became known as the Hollywood-based gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.)
In 1946, comedian Jerry Colonna recited the poem for a Disney cartoon, and it remains the most familiar film version. In 1953, composer William Schuman turned the story into an opera; in 1990, it became a ballet, with music by Michael Moricz and choreography by Lisa de Ribere. In his 1985 baseball song "Centerfield," John Fogerty sang, "Well, I spent some time in the Mudville nine, watching it from the bench. You know, I took some lumps when the mighty Case struck out."
Parodies abound. In 1960, Mad magazine published "Cool Casey at the Bat," with the poem re-written in Beat Generation slang: "'Like, strike one,' the umpire said." In 1978, comedian Foster Brooks rewrote it from the pitcher's perspective, titling it "Riley On the Mound." And in 2004, I myself noticed that the rhythm of the poem kind of matched that of Bob Dylan's song "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," so I wrote "Dylan at the Bat," meant to be recited while doing an impression of Bob.
Of course, some people couldn't leave well enough alone, and wrote sequels. In 1907, the great sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote "Casey's Revenge": After the strikeout ends the game, both Casey and the team go into a slump, until the opposing team from that game comes back, and again it comes down to Casey against the same pitcher. Casey takes the 1st 2 strikes, and he gets booed, but he hits a home run to win it, and those fair-weather fans love him again.
In 1908, Clarence P. McDonald wrote "Casey - Twenty Years Later." The team from Bugville sees their squad down to 8 men due to injuries and getting thrown out of the game, and the captain calls for a volunteer from the stands. A middle-aged man, looking like a graying, chubby shadow of his former self, comes forward, hits the game-winning home run, and then reveals that he is the formerly mighty Casey.
In 1954, in response to their own cartoon, Disney produced Casey Bats Again. Despite his strikeout, Casey gets the girl. He wants to have a son who can play ball, but his wife gives him only girls. They keep trying, until there are 9 daughters -- enough to form an all-girls baseball team!
In 1988, on the poem's 100th Anniversary, Sports Illustrated had Frank Deford flesh the story out to magazine-article length. Timothy Francis Xavier Casey still strikes out, but, like Mickey Owen in the World Series 53 years later, the ball gets away from the catcher, leading to 3 more fielding blunders, and Casey makes it all the way around the bases with the winning run anyway.
Deford got a little too cute: He imagined Casey having a sister named Katie Casey -- which was the name of the girl who, in song in 1908, told her boyfriend to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Deford also imagined her marrying a German-American bar owner in Baltimore, and having a son named George. Now, it's true that George Herman "Babe" Ruth was the son of a German-American bar owner in Baltimore, and his mother was known as Katie. But she, too, was of German descent, born Katherine Schamberger, and not the slightest bit Irish. Deford imagined Casey having a full rich life, and dying on July 17, 1941, the day Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak ended. Deford later expanded the story into a full novel.
*
June 3, 1888 was a Sunday. The National League did not permit games on Sundays, and it might not have mattered if they did, because some States banned professional sports on Sundays. Pennsylvania would be the last to do so, repealing their ban in 1933.
The American Association allowed games on Sundays, but only scheduled 1 for this Sunday: The St. Louis Browns beat the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, 6-4 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. In the preceding off-season, 6 players from the team formerly known as the Brooklyn Grays got married, so people began calling the team the Bridegrooms. In 1911, they took the name Dodgers. In 1900, the Browns became the Cardinals.
