“Casey at the Bat”

1. A poem by Ernest Lawrence Thayer from the late nineteenth century about Casey, an arrogant, overconfident baseball player who brings his team down to defeat by refusing to swing at the first two balls pitched to him and then missing on the third. The poem's final line is, “There is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.”

Example Sentences

Take the oft-repeated poem “Casey at the Bat,” which was written by Ernest Thayer and published in 1888:

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There have been sports, too: It was the birthplace of the Ryder Cup, candlepin bowling and Ernest Lawrence Thayer, the author of “Casey at the Bat.”

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At the start of every baseball season, reflecting on the canonical baseball poem “Casey at the Bat” is a worthy custom.

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Everything about baseball that transcends baseball is connected to the crowd: The game’s most famous song is “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”; “Casey at the Bat” is about Mudville, not Casey; and the best poem on baseball is William Carlos Williams’s “The Crowd at the Ballgame”:

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For instance, what if Edgar Allan Poe had written “Casey at the Bat”? “Quoth the umpire, ‘Strike three!’

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