Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888 — Ernest L. Thayer

"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 heroismand of a golden era of sport."""