And here's Thayer:
Posted on 06/03/2003 5:50:12 AM PDT by Valin
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 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, bleak with people, there went up a muffled roar, Like the beating of the storm waves on a worn and distant shore. "Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone in the stands, 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 the 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.
This was that glorious year 1888, and William Randolph Hearst had come home from college in the East to rescue a mundane newspa-per which his father considered to be the least of the family's hold-ings. He had brought with him sev-eral friends from Harvard, includ-ing Thayer, who was enjoying the life of a Western journalist before returning home to run his own fa-ther's woolen mills in Worcester, Mass. On the morning when he was to have his one brief contact with immortality, Thayer admit-ted that he was dull of mood and melancholy of spirit.
Under the slam-bang tech-niques of his friend Hearst, the once-sickly Examiner was quickly becoming San Francisco's leading newspaper. However, the fun was ending for Thayer. It was already in his mind that he ought to be going back to New England. He had indulged himself for three years, writing satirical verse and humorous sketches. Now it was time to turn to something serious, and he was resisting the inevitable with every sliver of his system.
Slowly he began to scribble with pen a snide item about the editor of the Lake County Avalanche, who had used coarse language to de-nounce the editor of the Sonoma Democrat for using, of all things, coarse language. That suited Thayer fine as a lead item. Usual-ly, he followed it with a bit of verse, some bright and senseless doggerel.
In those less complicated times, there had been only two ethnic groups worth mentioning at Worcester Classical High School. There were the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, of whom Thayer was one of the leaders. There were the Irish Catholics, whose undisputed champion was a large and emo-tional lad named Daniel Casey. The latter was kind, popular with his own group and an excellent stu-dent. He was not noted for holding his temper. On the other hand, Thayer was studious and frail, with a fondness for humor that tended to debase its victim.
There had been no student publication at the school because it had only opened the year before. So Thayer had started a pamphlet called the Monohippic Gazette, named for the Greek words mean-ing "one horse." In his first issue, he had seriously ridiculed Daniel Casey, indulging in the then-cur-rent Yankee prejudice that all Irish were hulking fools.
The confrontation had been swift and curious. There was Casey striding down the hall toward Thayer, "big clenched fists turned white at the knuckles and his face stern and cold." For a minute or two, Casey simply glared at the ed-itor of the Monohippic Gazette. Then he proceeded to say exactly what was on his mind. Quite possibly to Thayer's subconscious disappointment, Casey was neither a fool nor a bully. In-stead of beating Thayer, he turned and stomped away. The image of the physically superior Casey standing there, with flashing knuckles and grinding teeth, refus-ing to make the move that would have destroyed his enemy, had never left Thayer's psyche.
So there he sat, in the office of the San Francisco Examiner on a June morning in 1888 trying to figure out what to write. Once again feeling overwhelmed by cir-cumstance as he had that day when his Irish adversary had met him in the hall, he tried to slay the dragon all over, mistaking Daniel Casey's self-restraint for weak-ness once again. That miscalcula-tion locked Thayer and Casey for-ever in the mythology of the land.
"Casey at the Bat, a ballad of The Republic, sung in the year 1888," he scratched on paper. Then he wrote, "The outlook wasn't bril-liant for the Mudville nine that day; the score stood four to two with but one inning left 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 in deep despair. The rest clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast. They thought, if only Casey would get a whack at that -- We'd put up even money now with Casey at the bat."
On he went, writing as rapidly as possible, his mood being melan-choly and health not altogether sound. Thayer finished off with an item about a Nebraska editor who had been shot by a robber and tried to give it a humorist twist. He failed. Then he went home. A cou-ple of weeks later, he got on board a train and headed back to New England.
Years would go by before he would admit that he was the au-thor of "Casey at the Bat," even though dozens of men had submit-ted fraudulent claims to having written the poem.
Oddly, the piece reached New England before Thayer did. It had been reprinted all over the West without his knowledge. A copy was mailed to the manager of DeWoIf Hopper, a brilliant young actor who was appearing in the title role of Prince Methusalem at New York's Walleck Theater. Since Hopper was to appear at a dinner honoring the New York Giants of 1888, the manager thought it might be appropriate to read the poem. Inside of an hour, Hopper had memorized all 52 lines. He would recite it 40,000 times before his death.
It was fully five years before Hopper and Thayer met. It was at the Worcester Club and quite natu-rally, Hopper wanted to know who the model for Casey was. There
were numerous claimants, includ-ing King Kelly of the Boston Red Stockings. However, Thayer never denied that the model was Daniel Casey, who, in fact, had never played baseball. People never be-lieved him because the Casey of the poem was too real.
Throughout his life, as the poem was corrupted, altered, par-odied and attributed to others, Thayer tried to ignore it.
"The poem has absolutely no basis in fact. The verses owe their exist-ence to my enthusiasm for college baseball," he finally wrote, five years before his death in 1940. "In my brief connection with the Ex-aminer, I put out large quantities of nonsense, both prose and verse. In general quality Casey is neither better nor worse than much of the other stuff. Its persistent vogue is simply unaccountable and it would be hard to say if it has given me more pleasure than annoyance."
Ironically, when Thayer finally escaped the curse of his immortal doggerel, an obituary writer for the Examiner searched for a copy of the poem. He did not go to the files of the paper that made Casey famous. Instead, he grabbed a ref-erence book. Next to Ernest Law-rence Thayer's death notice was this version: "It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville nine that day. The score stood four to six with but an inning left to play." It was one of the corrupted versions which a Kansas newspaper editor had rewritten and tried to pass off as his own work. You could look it up.
And he completely ignores the true and funny story of Thayer's meeting with DeWitt Hopper . . . at a Harvard dinner. Thayer was called on to recite "Casey" - and Hopper's analysis of the recitation (from the point of view of a very talented music hall comedian of the 90s) is a riot. He describes Thayer as he -- (and I'm paraphrasing from memory) "in a dulcet Harvard whisper with all the impact of a caterpillar wearing rubber shoes crawling on a velvet carpet, implored the crowd to 'kill the umpire!'"
Bah.
The outlook wasn't groovy for the Mudville nine that day.
The score was four to two with just one chorus more to sway.
And so when Cooney conked at first and Barrows also sacked.
A nowhere rumble bugged up all the cats who dug the act.
If anyone can fine the rest of it and post it, I'd appreciate it. I did a Google search but nothing came up.
And here's Thayer:
St. Sebastian the Martyr is a patron of athletes.
St. Christopher is a general protector, especially of travelers. But he has been "disenfranchised" by the church, which has declared him merely legendary.
St. Rita of Cascia is sometimes considered a patroness of athletes generally, and there are medals available for numerous sports, including baseball:
She is also the "saint of the impossible" - sort of like St. Jude Thaddeus. So she should be ready willing and able to help in even a BAD slump . . . :-D
As Kipling said of Dante, "He must have made himself infernally unpopular!"
"Man's accidents are God's purposes."
- written by Sophia Peabody Hawthorne with her engagement diamond on a window pane, shortly after her marriage to Nathaniel.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.