Casey at the Bat

By Ernest L. Thayer, Christopher Bing (Illustrator)

A legendary baseball star's fateful strikeout echoes through time, capturing a bygone era's spirit.

4.1/5 Goodreads · 2,738 ratings

32 pages· 603 words· Est. 5 min read-aloud

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Bookroo's summary

In a vivid reimagining of Ernest Thayer's iconic poem, Christopher Bing brings to life the tale of a 19th-century baseball star's dramatic strikeout. Through a tapestry of period artifacts and memorabilia, this book immerses readers in the golden age of baseball. As mighty Casey faces his moment of truth, the stakes are high, and the echoes of his failure resonate through Mudville. Will the hero rise again, or is this the end of an era? A tragi-comic celebration of sport and heroism awaits discovery in this timeless classic.

From the publisher

“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. Christopher Bing’s magnificent version of this immortal ballad of the flailing 19th-century baseball star is rendered as though it had been newly discovered in a hundred-year-old scrapbook. Bing seamlessly weaves real and trompe l’oeil reproductions of artifacts-period baseball cards, tickets, advertisements, and a host of other memorabilia into the narrative to present a rich and multifaceted panorama of a bygone era. A book to be pored over by children, treasured by aficionados of the sport-and given as a gift to all ages: a tragi-comic celebration of heroism and of a golden era of sport.