The score stood four to two

We’ve talked before about the Casey’s Corner and the Mudville references based upon the Ernest Thayer poem. Today, we’re going back to Casey’s to check the box score of the game Mudville home game.The score of 4 – 2 comes directly from the first stanza of Thayer’s most notable piece. The poem originally ran in the San Francisco Examiner on June 3, 1888. It would take Thayer some time to garner credit for the writing, however, as he was a modest man and had signed the work under his nickname of Phin.

The other interesting tidbit to take away from the scoreboard is the name of the field. Notice that there is no name given to the visitors, as the original work did not name them, but nor did the poem feature a name for the Mudville field. So, where does the name come from? Simple, while the world knows of Thayer’s piece as Casey at the Bat, it also has a longer title, Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888.

While there are many questions surrounding Casey at the Bat, such as who was Casey based upon and were there two teams that were home to the Mudville nine and the visiting team, two things are for certain. The score in the bottom of the ninth stuck and Casey struck out that day.