Ballad of the Republic: The Arming of the Man

The poem "Casey at the Bat" captures the American spirit, the drama of Whitman's "hurrah game of the Republic," and the rough-hewn spectacle of the years when crowds cheered from wooden bleachers f...

Casey at the Bat: The Controversy (Part 1)

Following is the first of two posts in his Our Game blog by John Thorn, Official Historian of Major League Baseball, focusing on the authorship challenges that vexed Ernest Thayer for decades after...

The Love Song of E. "Phineas" Thayer

The Love Song of E. "Phineas" Thayer was awarded Honorable Mention in the Print/Online Article category of the 89th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition in August, 2020. The awarded vers...

Take Me Out to the Ball[ot] Game -- Baseball, Women's Suffrage, and Trixie Friganza

Ricardo, The following story is from today's Wall Street Journal.  Interesting to learn that TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME had its inspiration from a vaudeville star named Trixie Friganza.  Anyway, ...

Two Peoples Divided by a Common Ballad: The London Series, the Rise of Baseball in the UK, and an Ancient Legend

#LondonSeries #FestivalofBaseballUK #MLBintheUK @mlblondonseries @mlbuk @MLBUKCommunity @baseball_ref @thorn_john @SABR @baseballhof @BaseballBrit #CaseyattheBat  Among the many observances of base...

"The score stood four to two..."

It's been 140 years since the epic "Battle of Brooklyn" between baseball rivals Harvard and Yale for the Inter-Collegiate championship. April 11, the birthday of Harvard's Samuel Ellsworth Winslow,...

The Mudville Hymn

Suppose the Bard of Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson, had written "Casey at the Bat..."

The Raving: A Visit from Old Nick

What if Edgar Allan Poe--rather than Clement Clarke Moore--had written the poem better known by its first line, "'Twas the night before Christmas...?" This year’s submission to the Saturday "Visite...

Wanted by the FBI: Mighty Casey on the Ten Most Wanted List

Wanted: "The Mighty Casey" -- Height 7 feet; weight 600 pounds; bronze complexion, appears about 30 years old, but is considered "immortal." Once believed to be in hiding since an inglorious strike...