After medieval Florence, I am going to Mudville. “Casey at the Bat” is a baseball poem, a comic ballad and, above all, a story written to be read aloud.
I know its reputation and its ending. This time I want to read the whole poem and see whether that famous final line still works when I know it is coming.
The poem
Text: Poetry Foundation
Original subtitle: 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 despised, 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.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 clinched 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.
Before I read anything about it
There is almost nothing I can add that the poem does not already do for itself. It is so vividly written that I can almost smell the hot dogs and feel the tension of the crowd in a town ballpark small enough that everyone knows who Casey is. I can see every change in his expression as the pitches go by.
Thayer does such a good job of building the tension that, even though I know how it ends, the final line still catches me out.
Listening to the poem
I listened to Dave Jageler’s recitation for the Library of Congress. I especially loved the announcer-style delivery. It feels like exactly how the poem should be read.
In my heart, though, I will always hear it the way I first did: Penn reading it on stage while Teller dangled upside down, trying to escape from a straitjacket.
The pace builds with each pitch Casey lets pass. By the final swing, the pause before the last words feels that much more pregnant.
What I learned
“Casey at the Bat” first appeared on page four of San Francisco’s Daily Examiner on June 3, 1888. Ernest Lawrence Thayer signed it “Phin,” a version of his Harvard nickname. He had worked on the Harvard Lampoon alongside William Randolph Hearst, who later hired him to write comic ballads for the newspaper. It was published with no special fanfare.
A shortened, unattributed version then reached New York, where the writer Archibald Gunter passed it to the actor DeWolf Hopper. Hopper was a six-foot-five comic-opera and vaudeville performer with a booming voice, as well as a devoted baseball fan. He first recited it on stage in August 1888 at a performance attended by players from the New York Giants and Chicago White Stockings. It was an immediate success. He went on to perform it at least ten thousand times.
The poem was therefore a performance almost from the beginning. Hopper started a tradition that runs through recordings, cartoons, ballparks and, for me, Penn and Teller. The announcer-style reading does not add something that is not there. It brings out the performance already built into the lines.
The original subtitle, A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888, is part of the joke. Thayer tells the story of a failed at-bat in the language of a national epic. The crowd becomes a multitude, the ball becomes a “leather-covered sphere,” and Casey calms a threatened riot with “a smile of Christian charity.” He is treated like a hero entering battle right up to the moment his confidence defeats him.
The long rhyming lines are made for performance. “And now” repeats as the pitcher holds the ball, lets it go and Casey swings. A reader can keep speeding up and then suddenly stop. The final stanza pulls away from Mudville to imagine sunlight, music and laughter everywhere else before returning for the last line.
What stayed with me
There isn’t one particular line that stands out for me. It is the entire picture painted by the poem: a town at a baseball game placing all its hope in one swaggering local hero. That earns it the right to be called one of the most American poems ever written.