Alan Cooper got this information from the Museum of Worcester (formerly the Worcester Historical Society). Jerry Morse suggested we post it here.

On Tuesday, June 2, 2025, we celebrated the 137th anniversary of “Casey at the Bat” written by Ernest L. Thayer. Raised in Worcester, Thayer was a student at Classical High School; he lived at 67 Chatham Street, not far from the Museum of Worcester.

According to the Baseball Almanac, “Casey”–also known as “Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888“–is the single most famous baseball poem ever written. It was composed in Worcester and published on June 3, 1888, in the San Francisco EXAMINER. However, because Thayer signed the poem as “Phin”—a pen name he had used when writing for the “Harvard Lampoon,” he did not achieve immediate fame and recognition.

After a performance of the poem in August of 1888 by DeWolfe Hopper–a renowned vaudeville actor–the world came to know “Casey” and Ernest. 

Thayer took Casey’s true identity and Mudville’s exact location to his grave when he died in 1940.