San Fran Giants Strike out Mighty Casey

Ryan Howard

Sports Saturday

We are well into the World Series but I want to hearken back to game six of the National League championship series where the San Francisco Giants won the pennant. It was a game eerily reminiscent of that described in poetry’s greatest poem about baseball, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat.”

Baseball lends itself to a special kind of drama because it is one of the few team sports (cricket, of course, is another) where there is no clock. Therefore, in the words of legendary Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, “it’s never over til it’s over.” But it can seem over if there are two outs in the ninth inning and two mediocre batters must bat before your best hope comes to the plate.

That’s the case with the Mudville nine. They are down 4-2 in the ninth and, after Cooney and Barrows both “die at first,” they are one out from the end of the game.  They are also two batters away from “mighty Casey.”  If the pitcher induces an out from either Flynn (“a hoodoo”) or Jimmy Blake (“a cake”), the ball game really is over.

The Philadelphia Phillies, heavy favorites to win both the National League and the entire World Series, were in a comparable situation last Saturday except that they were down only a single run. Then, after one out, they coaxed a walk and then, following a second out, a second walk. Suddenly Ron Howard, one of the most feared batters in baseball, was up.

Howard is a former Most Valuable Player and a slugger who has reached both the 100 homerun and 200 homerun milestones faster than anyone in the history of the game. A single by Howard would have tied the game while a double, triple or homerun would have won it, extending the series to a game seven. Given Philadelphia’s talent and given that it was playing against a team of “castoffs and misfits,” the Phillies would be the favorite to win a deciding game seven.

Mighty Howard struck out.

Unlike in the poem, however, he didn’t strike out swinging. He struck out looking. The pitch was low and away but still in the strike zone.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

This is also how the New York Yankees, with their $210 million roster of superstars, lost to the feisty Texas Rangers. In the final out of the final game, Alex Rodriguez, one of the great hitters in the history of the game, struck out. Looking, not swinging.

A felicitous touch in “Casey at the Bat” is how Thayer holds the final moment before the awful fact of loss sinks in. The “air is shattered with the force of Casey’s blow” and then . . .

“Oh somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright …”

Here’s the poem:

Casey at the Bat

By Ernest Lawrence Thayer

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 pall-like 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 hoodoo, while the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat;
For there seemed but little chance of Casey 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 men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It pounded on 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 lit 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 flashed 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, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore;
“Kill him! Kill the umpire!” shouted some one on the stand;
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 dun sphere flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said “Strike two!”

“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and 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 has fled from Casey’s lip, the teeth are clenched 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 little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.

Additional note: I think one reason why this is baseball’s most memorable poems, even though better poems have been written about the game (such as this one), is because it simultaneously captures both the lightness and seriousness of sports. On the one hand, it is a mock epic, deliberately overwritten. (At one point Thayer even quotes the mock epic poet Alexander Pope’s “hope springs eternal in the human breast.”) The mock epic genre captures how the game is simultaneously epic and “just a game.” And also captures our despondency over losing. f “No joy in Mudville” has become part of the American vernacular.

Maybe there’s a little of Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts” in the poem as well. Catastrophe may have struck, a man might be falling out of the sky, but (as in “Casey”) the sun still shines bright and life goes on. I say I detect a touch of Auden in “Casey” but, since “Casey” was written in 1888, maybe the influence operates in the other direction.  I suspect Auden knew the poem.  He was on the verge of moving to America and (eventually) becoming an American when he wrote it.