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My wife really blindsided
me this past Valentine’s Day. Having
thanked me graciously for the dozen
roses that showed up at her office, she
then handed me my present: An envelope
out of which I was informed that I was
now the holder of season tickets to the
2006 Arizona Diamondbacks. My roses
suddenly felt pretty shabby.
After I had completed my
grateful groveling, I was left to
reflect that, yes, the great baseball
beast is stirring, stretching, yawning,
as its hibernation comes to a close.
Cactus League is in full swing; the
regular season gets going in early
April. For me, this means it’s an
excellent time to reread “Casey at the
Bat.”
The work of a Harvard
philosophy grad named Ernest Lawrence
Thayer who wrote nothing else of
distinction, “Casey at the Bat” was
first published, with no fanfare and to
little initial response, on Page 4 of
the June 3, 1888 edition of the San
Francisco Examiner. A couple of
months later, the vaudeville actor
William DeWolf Hopper (future husband of
gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and father
of actor William Hopper of TV’s Perry
Mason) recited the poem to a Gotham
audience which included members of the
New York Giants and the Chicago White
Stockings.
The performance was a
hit, became a signature of Hopper’s act,
and put “Casey” on the map. Since then
it’s become quite possibly the most
popular and widely reprinted American
narrative poem—only “A Visit From St.
Nicholas” might rival it.
Poets as diverse as
Robert W. Service and T.S. Eliot were
among its admirers. My father, who liked
to compose sentimental verse in the vein
of Edgar A. Guest (though generally less
mawkish than Guest’s), loved “Casey” and
read it to us now and then when we were
kids.
For those who may not
know the piece—sportswriter Grantland
Rice mocked such benighted souls with
his 1926 “He Never Heard of Casey!”—it’s
a “Ballad of the Republic” which tells,
in ringing, lofty rhyme, of the final
inning of a game in which the home team,
Mudville, is down by two runs. With only
one out left, Mudville’s star slugger
Casey improbably makes it to the plate,
and in the lines that follow Thayer
distills the essence of that special
bitterness that accompanies the
frustration of the Hope That Springs
Eternal in the Human Breast.
“Casey at the Bat” is
about as readily available as any poem
in English. It has been anthologized for
more than a century, it can be found
online in seconds, and it’s also
available in several fine picture-book
editions. One, with lovely illustrations
by C. F. Payne, sets the tale in the 19th
Century, while an inexpensive edition
from Putnam Juvenile, illustrated by
Patricia Polacco, depicts the drama
unfolding in a Little League game. Yet
another edition, with striking charcoal
drawings by LeRoy Neiman, also features
a surprisingly reflective foreword by
Yankes skipper Joe Torre.
But the definitive
“Casey” volume must surely be The
Annotated Casey at the Bat from
Dover, edited by Martin Gardner. This
tome includes, in addition to an
informative introduction and exhaustive
notes and appendices, the original
“Casey,” along with an early corruption,
a later (and lesser) revision by Thayer,
and an array of about two dozen parodies
and sequels, ranging from Al Graham’s
1939 “Casey’s Daughter at the Bat” to
MAD Magazine’s “‘Cool’ Casey at the
Bat ” to Ray Bradbury’s “Ahab at the
Helm.”
With full acknowledgement
of Thayer’s unshakable primacy among
bards of the hallowed Diamond, I
nonetheless humbly offer the following
baseball sonnet of my own. I have low
hopes for its popularity, but optimistic
vaudevillians may feel free to recite:
RAINOUT
(Erie Seawolves vs.
Norwich Navigators; Erie, PA., 7/15/05)
In Inning Three, the rain
began to fall,
After a flawless, golden
summer day
Of eastern breezes,
easing clouds so small
They seemed to mock the
fear of rain away.
But thunderheads arrived,
and from their locks
A yield of heavy droplets
started pinging
Upon the roof behind the
batter’s box,
And drowning out the song
our bats were singing.
The score was eight to
three, our boys on top,
When lightning cracked,
and pools began to form;
Thus Intercession brought
things to a stop,
And chased us out through
winds no longer warm.
One barefoot smiling
player, as he fled,
Dropped down and rode his
belly like a sled. |
