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Podcast: The Daily Poem
Episode: Ernest Lawrence Thayer's "Casey at the Bat"
Description: Though its author remained otherwise undistinguished, today's poem–with all its ecstasy, agony, and irony–has become almost as essential to the American experience as baseball itself. Happy reading!Ernest Lawrence Thayer was born on August 14, 1863, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He graduated with a BA in philosophy from Harvard University in 1885, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club and edited the Harvard Lampoon. At Harvard, Thayer met William Randolph Hearst, who would later run the San Francisco Examiner and hire Thayer to write a humorous column for the newspaper. On June 3, 1883, Thayer published what w...