Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-05-08
WROTE CASEY AT THE BAT.'
It Was Phinnie Thayer Who Wrote
 It First.


 The sporting writer of the New York Sun tells the following story of that great baseball poem, Casey at the Bat" and its origin:
 "A San Francisco newspaper man now in New York read the paragraph printed yesterday wherein maga- zine attributed to one of its writers, George Whitefield DVys, authorship of the immortal poem, Casey at the Bat. Then spake that San Francisco newspaper man thus:
 T have not the pleasure of know ing MT D'Vys. He may be one of your most famous poets, but his name faded out before it ever crossed the Great Divide and sounded clear and sweet through the fogs of San Fran cisco. But I welcome D'Vys. He surely is the last of the poets, great or small, living or dead, from Homer to Hampton, to whom Casey has not been attributed.
 Since the world was thrilled with that epic the morning of it's appear ance in the columns of the San Fran cisco Examiner twenty years ago, signed E. l.. IT, the initials of Err nest Lawrence Thayer, who wrote 1t, not day has passed that some new poet has not claimed or had claimed for him that work of genius. Some days there must have been several claims, for as I've figured it out in that statement the total would be 3,650, whereas the number now must be not far short of 100000, count ing MT D'Vys. It was in 1887 or thereabout that young-then young Hearst re- turned to San Francisco from Har- | yard to show us how newspaper should be run. To help him make 1 the show he brought along a troupe l of stars of the Lampoon. They were a joyous lot. There was Casey No ble, Genie Lent, Fatty Briggs, chap | named Barnes, whose title to fame at Harvard was not earned on the Lampoon but as club swinger. and there was Phinnie (E. L.) Thayer ] Lent and Thayer were sons of rich men, but the others had to earn their living.
 Genie Lent's father wanted him to be a. lawyer, and he is lawyer now, and Thayer's father wanted him to go into the wool business at | Worcester He's there now. But both rich papas could be made to yield to touch now and then, and and at such times journalism did not greatly concern that bunch of Har- yard stars.
 Then there were times when | papas were obdurate and Briggs would draw some pictures to illus trate Phinnie Thayer's verses. Thay- CT could write rhymes while thinking about anything else that pleased him He could write enough ballads in a day to set up their little club in funds ] for a week. He wrote them for ey- cry department of the paper, includ- ing the advertising department.
 One day he wrote Casey at the Bat and I was one of those who told him 1t was good stuff-of it's kind He didn't think much of that, but he sat up and took notice when the Sun praised it.
 T guess 1t was the Suns praise which started trouble. The verses began to appear in the backwoods and mountain top papers signed with the names of local bards. Then the songbirds on the city papers began to sign their names to it and pretty soon you could get rise out of Phinnie by asking which of the poets he lifted it from.
 One day Archie Gunter showed De Wolf Hopper a clipping of the verses he got from the Examiner and Hopper memorized them to recite at performance some baseball players were to attend. Then began Hopper's | trouble. Gunter didn't know who E L. T. was and Hopper couldn't learn, because he didn't know what paper Gunter had clipped the verses from. After turning down several hun dred bogus claimants, some of whom tried to touch him for royalty on his recitals, Hopper was introduced to a staid wool merchant in Worcester as the sure enough author of the verses the actor had been obliged to recite a | thousand times.
 But I'm glad Mir D'vys has come in. He is late but welcome and I've no doubt that Phinnie will add his name to his index of claimants under both ID and ""