The Casey Illusion
The Casey Illusion *
The ball took off en rapid route ~ for a grand parabolic ride,
A journey of 500 feet was building ~ down the left field side.
Fair or foul could not be known ~ as the ball hugged fast the line,
Eyes bugged out and mouths dropped too as acts of Hope Devine.
Home fans gasped ~ as the ball flew past ~ their muted happy roar,
“If only this ball clears as fair ~ we shall play this game no more.”
Down by a score of 4 to 2 ~ in the bottom half of Nine,
The tying runs on base ahead ~ set the win now up ~ just fine.
The problem was ~ this ball fans saw ~ was neither fair nor foul.
In fact ~ it had not happened yet. It was merely a mass mind growl.
The stuff that dreams are made of had hatched early in them all,
And caused them all to think they saw sugar victory’s sweet call.
In the end, everything remained ~ as Ernest Thayer once told us it had:
“Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
the band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
and somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
but there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.”
* Thank you forever too, Ernest Thayer, for your conceptual creativity and for all you have contributed to our basic enjoyment of the big moment in baseball anticipation and deflation, and to the inspirational borrowing art that is so essential to modest baseball writers like yours truly. ~ Bill McCurdy.
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Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle
Tags: The Casey Illusion
The Pecan Park Eagle 
December 9, 2018 at 4:03 pm |
And has Larry Dierker so dramatically recited!!