Mighty Casey

In 1885, E. Robinson Casey was third baseman on the Detroit National League ball team. In a game at Minneapolis when the bases were full and the score " four to three with but one inning more to play," he struck out. A young Harvard man--Ernest Lawrence Thayer--pinned the tragedy into a few neat verses, and Actor DeWolf Hopper took to reciting the poem.--

That was Casey at the Bat. The ball game was 38 years ago. And since then Casey has become a legendary figure like Paul Revere and the Village Blacksmith. Last week he came to life.

On the register of the Hotel Majestic, Manhattan, appeared the name of E. Robinson Casey, Syracuse, N. Y. He was, it developed, President of the Central New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the original Casey.

There was no reason to doubt his story.

-- So famed did the poem become that any ballplayer who takes a lusty swing at the ball is known as " Casey." In the recent World's Series, some attention was drawn to " Casey" Stengel of the New York Giants, who hit home-runs on two critical occasions. But not every baseball fanatic knows that this " Casey " derived his nickname--not from his likeness to the " original Casey "--but from the fact that he is a native of Kansas City ("K. C.").