From the desk of the Shadow Commissioner of Baseball: "Casey at the Bat" in the real world
I apologize in advance if, in fact, someone has already dealt with this. It seems pretty obvious to me, and someone else must have though of it too. I'll go ahead anyway, though. Fell free to exit at the cut tag.
Ernest Lawrence Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat" has plenty of miles on it, but I think it can still amuse audiences today, 123 years after it was written. Sadly, the baseball situation that is the centerpiece of the poem simply makes no sense. Yes, I know, it's all about hubris, and how-the-mighty-have-fallen. Casey has to be exposed as all swagger and no payoff. We have, however, just had a real-world example of that--the results of LeBron James taking his talents to Miami, but not taking an NBA title there--without any poetry. So I'll offer a reworking of Thayer for a real baseball game.
First, how many of you out there knew that Thayer got his start on . . . the Harvard Lampoon? Or that he worked there alongside none other than William Randolph Hearst? Or that Hearst brought him, and other staffers, out to San Francisco to take over the paper that became the anchor of the Hearst chain? How did Orson Welles drop all of this from Citizen Kane?
For the Mudville Nine that day, as we all know, "The score stood four to two, with but one inning left to play." This is not specifically stated as the bottom of the ninth, but the later razzing of the umpire makes it clear that there's a Mudville crowd in attendance, so we can safely conclude that our heroes are in their last time at bat. The first two batters made outs, and the fans despaired of seeing mighty Casey get a chance--and then they were given hope: "But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all, and Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball." This left runners on second and third, the tying runs, with Casey next to bat.
I'm going to intrude here, throat being cleared thunderously, to object to the derision of my namesake, who is cryptically referred to as a "cake," which I infer to be about as great an insult as one could level at a sportsman in the 1880s. In my own career on the diamond, I may not have ever literally torn the cover off the ball (although considering how long we tried to keep using certain 16-inch clinchers, it may have happened), but my extra base hits certainly occurred more frequently than lunar eclipses.
Anyway, let's sum up the situation: Bottom of the ninth, two outs, tying runs on base, team's most feared offensive threat coming to bat, and first base open.
It's obvious. In any real baseball situation, Casey would be intentionally walked.
Yes, I know, the game in the poem has more of an air of town ball than of the majors. Also, this was written in 1888, when the game was surely much simpler. Perhaps this was the pure sport, without such craven innovations as the intentional walk.
Well, no. It's true that there probably would not have been a relief pitcher, which every twitchy fan today would expect after a pitcher gives up hits to, ahem, a "lulu" and a "cake." Pitchers were expected to stay on the mound in almost every circumstance. Righty-lefty substitutions were largely unknown. The free pass, however, was already a time-honored practice. It was in 1881 that there is the first recorded instance of a manager having ordered an intentional walk with the bases loaded, so surely it was common by then to fill an open first base with a batter who posed matchup problems for the pitcher.
So now we address what would happen after Casey trots to first. He probably bats cleanup (or maybe third, since Blake is considered an easy out and such a creature would not bat third), so the hitter after Casey would have some power but probably be more of a line drive contact hitter. The key, however, is that the guy after Casey isn't as good, and with first base now occupied, there's a force at every base, and the chances of the opposition securing the last out are much greater now than they were with Casey, even at his most arrogant, getting his swings.
With all of this taken into account, we simply delete stanzas eight through twelve, keep the first two lines of the last stanza, and replace the last two lines with the following:
And somewhere, players sign autographs, and vendors' wares are hawked,
But there is no joy in Mudville--Mighty Casey was intentionally walked.