Casey at the Bat (film)

Casey at the Bat is a 1927 silent film, directed by Monte Brice, written by Ernest Thayer based on the baseball poem of the same name, and starring Wallace Beery, Ford Sterling, ZaSu Pitts and Sterling Holloway in his film debut. Surviving period advertisements indicate Eddie Sutherland may have been slated as director before Brice. A copy was preserved at the Library of Congress.

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Casey at the Bat

"Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888" is a baseball poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. First published in The San Francisco Examiner (then called the The Daily Examiner) on June 3, 1888, it was later popularized by DeWolf Hopper in many vaudeville performances. It has become one of the best-known poems in American literature. The poem was originally published anonymously (under the pen name "Phin", based on Thayer's college nickname, "Phinney").

Synopsis

A baseball team from the fictional town of "Mudville" (implied to be the home team) is losing by two runs in its last inning. Both the team and its fans (a crowd of 5,000, according to the poem) believe they can win if Mighty Casey, Mudville's star player, gets up to bat. However, Casey is scheduled to be the fifth batter of the inning, and the first two batters (Cooney and Barrows) fail to get on base. The next two batters (Flynn and Jimmy Blake) are perceived to be weak hitters with little chance of reaching base to allow Casey a chance to bat.