Casey's Revenge

There were saddened hearts in Mudville for a week or even more;
There were muttered oaths and curses-every fan in town was sore.
"Just think," said one, "how soft it looked with Casey at the bat!
And then to think he'd go and spring a bush-league trick like that."

All his past fame was forgotten; he was now a hopeless "shine,"
They called him "Strike-out Casey" from the mayor down the line,
And as he came to bat each day his bosom heaved a sigh,
While a look of hopeless fury shone in mighty Casey's eye.

The lane is long, someone has said, that never turns again,
And Fate, though fickle, often gives another chance to men,
And Casey smiled-his rugged face no longer wore a frown;
The pitcher who had started all the trouble came to town.

All Mudville had assembled; ten thousand fans had come
To see the twirler who had put big Casey on the bum;
And when he stepped into the box the multitude went wild.
He doffed his cap in proud disdain-but Casey only smiled.

"Play ball!" the umpire's voice rang out, and then the game began;
But in that throng of thousands there was not a single fan
Who thought that Mudville had a chance; and with the setting sun
Their hopes sank low-the rival team was leading "four to one."

The last half of the ninth came round, with no change in the score;
But when the first man up hit safe the crowed began to roar.
The din increased, the echo of ten thousand shouts was heard
When the pitcher hit the second and gave "four balls" to the third.

Three men on base-nobody out-three runs to tie the game!
A triple meant the highest niche in Mudville's hall of fame;
But here the rally ended and the gloom was deep as night
When the fourth one "fouled to catcher" and the fifth "flew out to right."

A dismal groan in chorus came-a scowl was on each face-
When Casey walked up, bat in hand, and slowly took his place;
His bloodshot eyes in fury gleamed; his teeth were clinched in hate;
He gave his cap a vicious hook and pounded on the plate.

But fame is fleeting as the wind, and glory fades away;
There were no wild and woolly cheers, no glad acclaim this day.
They hissed and groaned and hooted as they clamored, "Strike him out!"
But Casey gave no outward sign that he had heard this shout.

The pitcher smiled and cut one loose; across the plate it spread;
Another hiss, another groan, "Strike one!" the umpire said.
Zip! Like a shot, the second curve broke just below his knee-
"Strike two!" the umpire roared aloud; but Casey made no plea.

No roasting for the umpire now-his was an easy lot;
But here the pitcher whirled again-was that a rifle shot?
A whack! a crack! and out through space the leather pellet flew,
A blot against the distant sky, a speck against the blue..

Above the fence in center field, in rapid whirling flight,
The sphere sailed on; the blot grew dim and then was lost to sight.
Ten thousand hats were thrown in air, ten thousand threw a fit;
But no one ever found the ball that mighty Casey hit!

Oh, somewhere in this favored land dark clouds may hide the sun,
And somewhere bands no longer play and children have no fun;
And somewhere over blighted lives there hangs a heavy pall;
But Mudville hearts are happy now-for Casey hit the ball!

James Wilson 1907
(pseudonym of Grantland Rice)

Casey At The Bat

It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood two to four, with but an inning left to play.
So, when Cooney died at second, and Burrow did the same,
A pallor wreathed the features of the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go, leaving there the rest,
with that hope which springs eternal within the human breast.
For they thought: ""If only Casey could get a whack at that,"
They'd put even money now, with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, and likewise so did Blake,
And the former was a pudd'n and the latter was a fake.
So on that stricken multitude a deathlike silence sat;
For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a "single," to the wonderment of all.
And the much-despised Blakey "tore the cover off the ball."
And when the dust had lifted, and they saw what had occurred,
There was Blakey safe at second, and Flynn a-huggin' third.

Then from the gladdened multitude went up a joyous yell'_
It rumbled in the mountaintops, it rattled in the dell;
It struck upon the hillside and rebounded on 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 on 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 when the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance glanced 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 the stern and distant shore.
"Kill him!  kill the umpire!" shouted someone 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 made the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and the 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 the ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lips, his teeth are clenched in hate,
He pounds with cruel vengeance 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 somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Mudville:  Mighty Casey has struck out.

Casey At The Bat by
Ernest Lawrence Thayer 1888

World Series

Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians are the teams playing this year. It has been 108 years since the Cubs made it to the Series and 68 years for the Indians. Of course there is lots of national interest, and truth be told, a wonderful break from the calamitous 24/7 hour presidential campaigns.

The song, 'Take Me Out To The Ball Game' was written by Jack Norworth and Albert von Tilzer, who had not seen a ball game prior to writing the song. Referred to as a Tin Pan Alley song because it was published by one of the popular music companies between New York's West 28th Street and 6th Ave, the area where the sound of so many cheap pianos being played sounded like the banging of pans.

The 1908 version is no longer sung, but the chorus is still popular and is traditionally sung during the middle of the 7th inning. Fans usually join in.

Chorus
Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd;
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don't care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win its a shame.
For its one, two, three strikes you're out,
At the old ball game.

Dictionary Definitions

Once upon a time, when I was in the fourth grade, the teacher taught the class how to use the dictionary, and we were allowed to leave our seats without permission when ever we needed to look up the meaning of a word.  The dictionary was a heavy, thick book on a stand across the room from my desk, alongside the wall of windows where play grounds and recess areas were visible.

I think I used the freedom of going to the dictionary more than any other classmate, making numerous trips per day.  I actually did look up the meanings of words, but I also took sneaky peaks out the windows to see what was happening outside.  Sometimes it really did take a while to leaf thru pages and scroll thru the alphabet to find the word I was looking for. You would think with all that effort, I might have learned to spell. 

Some words I've recently checked in the dictionary:

Deception: act of deceiving, state of being deceived, trick, stratagem, ruse, hoax, fraud, artifice
Artifice:  a clever trick or stratagem, crafty, expedient, wile, cunning, contrivance, subterfuge
Subterfuge: deception to achieve an end, a stratagem employed to conceal or evade, an expedient used to evade a rule or escape consequences

Election Stress Disorder

I'm suffering from election stress disorder from the, "he said", "she said" stuff in the campaign speeches of the two most disliked nominees in history; both wanting to be president.  After listening to their last scheduled debate, my stress level has skyrocketed!

Where did we go wrong?

Bring me a person to match my mountains.
Bring me a person to match my plains.
A person with empires in their purpose and new eras in their brains.

paraphrased quote of Sam Walter Foss

Undercover Boss

In the television program, Undercover Boss, CEO's of companies that depend on the satisfaction of the public they serve, disguise themselves and work incognito along side employees to see for themselves just how well the company is doing.  After working in several  capacities and at various company locations for a week or more, they report back to the executives at the home office.  The CEO then invites the employees that he worked with to come to the home office where they learn about the deception.  Of course the employees are surprised.  After their conduct is discussed, the episode ends on a high note; some get compliments and a raise, some get bonuses, and some get an all expense paid vacation to a place of their choice. 

During the episode that highlighted White Castle hamburgers, I was reminded of the many vacation trips when the family  traveled from the Midwest thru southern states to visit relatives.  On one of the trips we discovered a White Castle.  It was a new experience for us.  The town we lived in did not have a hamburger stand. We did have two lunch cafes that listed hamburgers on the menu, but they primarily sold things like hot beef sandwiches.  One of the cafes did a big business selling milk shakes, fried ham sandwiches and coca cola.  This was long before McDonalds or Burger King. 

We were delighted to find White Castles and we looked for them as we drove from town to town.  Looking for them became a game second only to stamping white horses every time you saw one in a field as we drove by. To stamp a white horse, you moistened the tip of your thumb, tapped it on the palm of your hand, then tapped the palm with a closed fist to seal the stamp. 

It has been many years since I ate a White Castle burger.  I don't remember what towns they were in, but as Undercover Boss filmed the one in Covington, Kentucky, I like to think we might have stopped there for burgers on our way to Louisville, Kentucky, our primary vacation destination.   

Will He or Will She?

When I was growing up and became upset over some trifle, my grandmother would tell me, "in a hundred years it won't make any difference". It annoyed me no end when she would say it, but I would grudgingly realize I was probably creating a tempest in a teapot. Now I've decided to apply her advice to the campaigns being run by the two people running for president of the United States.

I've stopped listening to the coverage of the campaigns since it has been reduced to an endless recitation of the insults nominees hurl at each other. Instead, I've turned my attention to reading about a long ago city with a population of 40,000 that existed in the Mississippi valley more than a 1000 years before European contact. Cahokia, a pre-Columbian Native American City, was located directly across the Mississippi river at St Louis, Missouri.

Cahokia was a complex and sophisticated society sustained by a three fold agriculture, corn, beans and squash. It was larger than London in 1250. The people of Cahokia began mound building sometime around the 9th century. The original site contained 120 earthen mounds over an area of 6 sq. miles, but only 89 remain. Many of them destroyed by later farming. To achieve this, thousands of workers, over decades, moved an estimated 55 million cubic ft. of earth in woven baskets, creating a network of mounds and plazas that covered 14 acres and topped by a massive 5000 sq. ft. building 50 ft. high. A mound called Monk Mound has 4 terraces and is 951 ft. long, 836 ft. wide and covers 13.8 acres. It contains 814,000 cu yard of earth.

Anthropologists think the original idea, that Cahokia may have had a warrior-male structure, is a misunderstanding. New discoveries in Mound 72 the highly decorated grave site may have clues to the politics and culture. Cahokia was abandoned around 1300 and not re-occupied by indigenous tribes. The fate of the people remains a mystery. The site may have become unhealthy with polluted water ways, over hunting, deforestation and flooding. In 2015, evidence was found of two severe floods occurring: one in 1100 and one in 1260.

Cahokia is a UNESSCO Heritage Site. The Illinois State Historical Site maintains the park along with the Cahokia Preservation Agency. It's open to the public with tours and events listed on the Illinois web page.