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Article: The Casey connection; Poem penned in Worcester.(NEWS)

Article from:
Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, MA)
Article date:
April 25, 2007
Copyright

Byline: Ann Lindblad

"The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day ..."

Everyone knows the opening lines to "Casey at the Bat," the most famous baseball poem ever written. But few know that it was written in Worcester, based on a real "Casey," or that the real Mudville is just 25 miles down the road.

Worcester's own Ernest Lawrence Thayer scribbled down "Casey" in two hours at his boyhood home at 67 Chatham St. early in the baseball season of 1888 when he was 25 years old. A humor columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, Thayer was home in Worcester recovering from an illness.

Who was Casey and where was Mudville? ...

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