The Night Casey Was Born: The True Story Behind the Great American Ballad "Casey at the Bat"

The acclaimed biographer offers a social history of the poem that helped America fall in love with baseball—a lively story that "hits it out of the park" (The Baltimore Sun).

The sport that came to be known as America's Pastime was still in its infancy when a journalist for the San Francisco Examiner wrote a ballad extolling the drama and excitement of the game. Ernest L. Thayer's Casey at the Bat made its first appearance in the Examiner on June 3, 1888. But the immortal tale of Might...