Casey at the Bat: A Centennial Edition

The illustrations for this centennial edition of Casey at the Bat were rendered from historic photographs and drawings from the archives of the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown, New York. The full-length portrait of Casey that faces the title page was based on a photograph of Elmer Flick who played for the Athletics in 1902. The remaining portraits of Casey were based on two other players for the A's: Rube Oldring, 1911, facing the halftitle page, and Topsy Hartsel, 1905, on page fourteen. The illustration of Casey's teammate on page ten, Flynn or Blake — whichever the reader prefers — was based on the great "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. The pitcher at the top of this page was based on Nap Rucker, of the Dodgers, while the pitcher on page eighteen hurling that humiliating pitch was based on Edward "Jeff" Pfeffer, also of the Dodgers, 1914. Our stoic umpire is, appropriately, anonymous. And lastly, the empty and joyless stadium was based on a 1903 photograph of the American League's newly built Hilltop Park.

"And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out." Those lines have echoed through the decades, the final stanza of a poem published pseudonymously in the June 3, 1888, issue of the San Francisco Examiner. Its author would rather have seen it forgotten. Instead, Ernest Thayer's poem has taken a well-deserved place as an enduring icon of Americana.