Page "Ernest Thayer" Paragraph 4

On the possible model for Casey, Thayer dismissed the notion that any single living baseball player was an influence.

However, late 1880s Boston star Mike " King " Kelly is odds-on the most likely model for Casey's baseball situations.

Besides being a native of a town close to Boston, Thayer, as a San Francisco Examiner baseball reporter in the offseason of 1887 – 88, covered exhibition games featuring Kelly.

In November 1887, some of his reportage about a Kelly at-bat has the same ring as Casey's famous at-bat in the poem.

A 2004 book by Howard W. Rosenberg, Cap Anson 2: The Theatrical and Kingly Mike Kelly: U. S. Team Sport's First Media Sensation and Baseball's Original Casey at the Bat, reprints a 1905 Thayer letter to a Baltimore scribe who was asking about the poem's roots.

In the letter, Thayer singled out Kelly ( d. 1894 ), as having shown " impudence " in claiming to have written it.

Rosenberg argues that if Thayer still felt offended, Thayer may have steered later comments away from connecting Kelly to it.

Kelly had also performed in vaudeville, and recited the poem dozens of times, possibly, to Thayer's dismay, butchering it.

Incidentally, the first public performance of the poem was on August 14, 1888, by actor De Wolf Hopper, on Thayer's 25th birthday.