Today is the 125th anniversary of the publication of “Casey at the Bat,” arguably the most popular and famous of American poems, the creation of humorist Ernest L. Thayer in 1888.
The poem carries many lessons relevant to ethics and life within its tale of the hometown hero who fails spectacularly just when heroics are most needed and anticipated, such as…
- Don’t promise what you cannot be sure of delivering.
- Good faith failure isn’t unethical, a sin or a crime, but it still carries with it the need for someone to accept responsibility for it.
- The focus of disaster is always on the last individual who might have prevented it, but that is neither fair nor logical. The Mudville Nine lost the game, not Casey.
- Expecting miracles, last-minute rescues, heroic intervention and infallible rescuers is foolish and irresponsible.
- Respect your adversaries, for your own sake as well as theirs.
- “Pride goeth before a fall.”
Today, however, I am struck by how neatly the poem reminds us that in baseball there is no spin, no rock to hide under and no Fifth Amendment to claim. When a player fails, or makes a mistake, or misbehaves, it is usually all out on the field, watched in person by thousands, seen on TV by millions, and recorded forever. There is usually no way to deny or hide responsibility, and indeed part of the professionalism of baseball is accepting that, facing the media and the public, and saying, “That was on me. I failed. I’ll do better next time.”
Most of the time, that’s all the crowd asks after failure. Honesty and accountability.
As long as Casey doesn’t keep striking out, that is.
Here’s the poem, recited by the now-forgotten Bob Hope sidekick Jerry Colonna, he of the rolling eyes:
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Spark: Craig Calcaterra
Graphic: Fine Art America
Ethics Alarms 
I remember someone once wrote a follow up. I don’t remember who and I really don’t remember when, but the essence of it was that the catcher dropped the third strike, allowing Casey to make it safely to first base, the moral of that story being, I guess, that the end is not always necessarily the end.
There are several “sequels.” One is about redemption, where the Mudville team loses a bunch of players due to injury and has to ask for a volunteer from the stands. An old man comes forward, wins the game with last inning heroics, and reveals that he was Casey “who struck out, those many years ago.”
As Berra said (reputedly), it ain’t over til its over.
Wisdom unnecessary to pass along to any Red Sox fan of long-standing, especially this one, who is intimately familiar with Yogi’s rule in action to his team’s advantage in 1967 (repeatedly), 1975 (Game 6), 1978 (until the play-off), 1986 (Henderson’s two strike homer), and 2004 (the 0-3 comeback), and to its sorrow in 1948, 1949, 1974 (8 games ahead in August), 1975 (Game WS Game #2) 1978 (14 game lead!); 1986 World Series (you know), 2003 7th game ALCS, and 2011, final game, final out, final pitch.
Here is another follow up called ‘Casey Bats Again’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq9ur0VfVn0
When I was a kid, I was a Senators fan; seewhere that got me.
The background noise of a tv ball game on a Sunday afternoon and I am instantly taken back to my youth. 🙂
MAD Magazine did a parody quite a while ago (I dug it up out of my Dad’s collection, it’s that long ago)- “Cool Casey at the Bat.” It’s a pretty quality Beatnik-style version along the lines of “The action wasn’t groovy for the Endsville Nine that day…” and “They figured if old Casey could, like, get in one more lick- we’d put a lot of bread down, Man, on Casey and his stick!”
Always used to crack me up. I had to dig it up online- couldn’t find a written version, but here it is on Youtube:
I hated it whenever they inserted that awful cartoon into Wonderful World of Disney shows. (American Victoriana still leaves me cold.) But isn’t the moral of the poem (buried in there somewhere): “You win some and you lose some?” Or, as the old Russian saying goes, “Sometimes you bite the bear, sometimes the bear bites you?”
And was Casey really such a conceited villain for taking the first two pitches? Wouldn’t his at bat be considered trying to work his way into a batter’s count? He could have popped either of the first two pitches up and ended the game that way. Most homerun hitters strike out a great deal.
Nothing in sports is as difficult as hitting major league pitching. Ask Michael Jordan (or better yet, Terry Francona).
I also think the poet was saying, essentially, “Yes, live sports is engrossing, but it’s just a diversion from the important stuff.”
Buck up Jack, you could have been born in Chicago. The Sawks have won not just one, but two World Series in your lifetime. I tell my Arlington, MA-born wife the same thing. To no effect whatsoever, of course….
This is probably going to annoy most people who listen. But this is the track of a guy who became a sort of celebrity for reciting the poem. I appreciate this style of delivery because it helps me to imagine myself more vividly as a man in the times when this recording was made, loving baseball like my dad and grandfather did:
http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/1097/
Better version here, I think…with more interesting commentary:
Hopper was made the recitation of this poem his trademark. Yes, his is the classic.
I just miss Jerry Colonna.
Oh, thanks for this!
Thank you, Jack; that was totally delightful. I always included Casey in our poetry selections when I taught high school English, and the kids loved it. And then we always followed it with the much lesser known “Casey’s Revenge” by Grantland Rice in 1906.
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/po_case2.shtml