Ernest L. Thayer's Casey at the Bat
A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888
Book - 2000
"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 heroismand of a golden era of sport.
Publisher:
Brooklyn, NY : Handprint Books, 2000
Edition:
1st ed
ISBN:
9781929766000
1929766009
1929766009
Branch Call Number:
811.52 THA 2000
Characteristics:
1 v. (unpaged) : ill
Additional Contributors:
Alternative Title:
Casey at the bat


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Add a CommentThis classic poem is enriched by the old-fashioned black-and-sepia drawings and the additions of faux newspaper clippings that artfully surround the poem as it progresses. The pictures set the story firmly within its 19th-century origins with drawings of $0.20 tickets for the fictional baseball game and illustrations of faux advertisements for everything from neckties, soap to baseball gloves.
It is a genial tale, even with its glum conclusion, and this particular rendering captures all the sparkle that accompanied a 19th-century summer day spent at the games.