For my May blog article, I wrote about my favorite poem My
Papa’s Waltz (Link HERE).
Continuing with a poetry theme, my June article is about
a baseball poem by Ernest Lawrence Thayer: Casey at the Bat.
This poem was
published in the San Francisco Examiner on June 3, 1988.
According to the website Poets.org¹, Ernest Lawrence Thayer
was born on August 14, 1863 (d. August 21, 1940) in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University. While there,
he met William Randolph Hearst, who would later have the San Francisco
Examiner. Hearst eventually hired Thayer to write a humorous column for his
newspaper, which turned out to be Thayers’s most famous work, Casey at the Bat.
Thayer wrote under the pen name “Phin”.
 |
| Ernest Lawrence Thayer - Reference¹ |
Wikipedia² tells us:
- DeWolf Hopper “gave the poem’s first stage recitation on August 14, 1888 at New York’s Wallack Theater as part of the comic opera Prinze Methusalem in the presence of the Chicago and New York baseball teams, the white Stockings and the Giants, respectively.
- Hopper reportedly recited the poem an estimated 10,000 times on the low side and up to 40,000 times on the high side.
- The first recorded version of this poem was by Russell Hunting, who spoke in a broad Irish accent.
- Among others who have recorded this poem, James Earl Jones recorded a version with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra in 1996.
- The poem has been referenced in many movies, television shows, books, comics, and parodies as well as being set to music as a song and adapted into an opera.
- On July 11, 1996, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp depicting “Mighty Casey” as part of a commemorative American folk heroes set that included Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and Pecos Bill.
 |
| Mighty Casey Commemorative Stamp - Reference³ |
My first recollection of Casey at the Bat is from watching this 1946 Disney
cartoon.
Once I discovered Casey at the Bat via Disney, my grandpa, whom I talked about in my May article, read it to me many times thereafter. He was a big fan of baseball, so he didn't mind at all. :-)
Read the poem HERE
Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
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Resources:
1. Poets.org, Academy of American Poets,
poets.org/poet/ernest-lawrence-thayer.
2. “Casey at
the Bat.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 31 May 2020,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_at_the_Bat.
