Other editions of book Casey At the Bat: 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." Thus begins one of the most famous poems in American history: Ernest L. Thayer’s "Casey at the Bat". When the powerful Mudville baseball team enters the ninth inning of their game behind by two runs, things seem pretty grim. And when the first two batters make outs, it looks like their best player, the mighty Casey, won’t even get a chance to win the game for them. Then, two unlikely players get hits, and suddenly the crowd is cheering as Casey strolls to the plate. Casey’s epic at-bat has delighted generations of listeners, young and old. Richard Poe’s timeless narration captures the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, and all the thrilling excitement of baseball - and life.

"And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville-mighty Casey has struck out." Those lines have echoed through the decades, the final stanza of a poem published pseudonymously in the June 3, 1888, issue of the San Francisco Examiner. Its author would rather have seen it forgotten. Instead, Ernest Thayer's poem has taken a well-deserved place as an enduring icon of Americana. Christopher Bing's magnificent version of this immortal ballad of the flailing 19th-century baseball star is rendered as though it had been newly discovered in a hundred-year-old scrapbook. Bing seamlessly weaves real and trompe l'oeil reproductions of artifacts-period baseball cards, tickets, advertisements, and a host of other memorabilia into the narrative to present a rich and multifaceted panorama of a bygone era. A book to be pored over by children, treasured by aficionados of the sport-and given as a gift to all ages: a tragi-comic celebration of heroism and of a golden era of sport.