Ernest L. Thayer
| Ernest Thayer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
August 14, 1863 Lawrence, Massachusetts |
| Died | August 21, 1940 (aged 77) Santa Barbara, California |
| Pen name | Phin |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Rosalind Buel Hammett |
| Partner | Rose Washington |
| Children | Jillian Thayer |
Ernest Lawrence Thayer (August 14, 1863 – August 21, 1940) was an American writer and poet who wrote the poem "Casey" (or "Casey at the Bat"), which is "the single most famous baseball poem ever written" according to the Baseball Almanac, and "the nation’s best-known piece of comic verse—a ballad that began a native legend as colorful and permanent as that of Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan."
Thayer was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts and raised in nearby Worcester. He graduated magna cum laude in philosophy from Harvard University in 1885, where he had been editor of the Harvard Lampoon and a member of the theatrical society Hasty Pudding. William Randolph Hearst, a friend from both activities, hired Thayer as humor columnist for the San Francisco Examiner 1886–88.
"During my brief connection with the Examiner, I put out large quantities of nonsense, both prose and verse, sounding the whole newspaper gamut from advertisements to editorials. In general quality 'Casey' (at least in my judgment) is neither better nor worse than much of the other stuff. Its persistent vogue is simply unaccountable, and it would be hard to say, all things considered, if it has given me more pleasure than annoyance. The constant wrangling about the authorship, from which I have tried to keep aloof, has certainly filled me with disgust."
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Wikipedia