Ernest Thayer

Ernest Lawrence Thayer ( born August 14, 1863 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, † August 21, 1940 in Santa Barbara, California ) was an American poet, who wrote his poem Casey at the Bat an ode to the baseball.

Life

The son of a rich wool magnate Edward Davis Thayer began after attending the High School in Worcester in 1881 to study philosophy at Harvard University under Professor William James and graduated in 1885 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA Philosophy). Already during his studies he was 1884-1885 editor of The Harvard Lampoon.

In 1886 he was a columnist for the issued by his school friend William Randolph Hearst newspaper San Francisco Examiner, for which he wrote a weekly column 1886-1888. The Examiner published Casey at the Bat, Thayer's ode to baseball, the first time on June 3, 1888 under the pseudonym " Phin ". Although it was released a few weeks later in the New York Sun again, the poem received its popularity especially through the several thousand appearances of the comedian and actor DeWolf Hopper.

Due to the wealth of his family Thayer worked only sporadically in family businesses or as a columnist from 1896 to 1897 at the New York Evening Journal. The few other poems he wrote were usually easy, funny and memorable, and published by him in 1900 in the illustrated book on the Casey Bat. Towards the end of his life he devoted himself increasingly to philosophy and wrote some philosophical articles, but was frustrated that he was known for a poem, which he wrote at the age of 24 years.

For many decades, there were speculations and theories about the true identity of Casey, where Thayer himself made ​​clear time and again that the poem refers neither to a particular baseball game or player. He himself wore the poem rarely open before, and had to read it here, because he could not recite it by heart.

Casey on the Bat was also the basis for the opera The Mighty Casey (1953 ) by William Schuman. Moreover, subsequent actress and race car driver Kasey Rogers in school time was given the nickname " Casey " because of their good performance in baseball.