Casey at the Bat; A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 Copiously and Faithfully Illustrated by Christopher Bing

New York: Scholastic Inc, 2001. First Scholastic Printing [stated]. This edition was only available for distribution through the school market. Hardcover. Very good. Christopher BIng. Unpaginated (32 pages). Illustrated (color). Cover has slight wear and soiling. Black ink mark over price on back cover. Caldecott Honor Book (symbol on front cover). 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." "Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888" is a baseball poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. First published in The San Francisco Examiner (then called The Daily Examiner) on June 3, 1888, it was later popularized by DeWolf Hopper in many vaudeville performances. It has become one of the best-known poems in American literature. The poem was originally published anonymously (under the pen name "Phin", based on Thayer's college nickname, "Phinney"). Christopher Bing won a 2001 Caldecott Honor Award for Casey at the Bat, the classic 1888 poem. For as long as I can remember, there were three things I wanted to do," says Christopher Bing. "I wanted to draw, I wanted a crack at Everest and K2, and I wanted to fly jets." One out of three isn't bad. Bing, whose illustrated version of Ernest Lawrence Thayer's immortal poem "Casey at the Bat" made a splash, never did join the Marine Corps Air Wing. Nor does he get in much high-altitude climbing these days. But he does get to draw. He had long admired Wallace Tripp's 1978 version of Casey at the Bat, which pictures Casey as a bear. Henry Louis Gates Jr.-who has a cameo in Bing's book as the catcher-introduced Bing to his agent, Carl Brandt of Brandt & Brandt, who brought Bing's work to the attention of Christopher Franceschelli, former president of Dutton Children's Books. A contract soon followed. Bing's version hews faithfully to the late 19th-century format in which the poem was first published, presenting it as a series of trompe l'oeil newspaper "engravings" on pages adorned with scrapbook-type memorabilia-old baseball tickets, currency, period advertisements and the like. "When people pick up one of my books," Bing says, "I want them to become absorbed into the work and feel like they are experiencing the time and the period of the event that they're looking at or reading about." He goes so far as to sign copies of his book in sepia ink "so as not to spoil the illusion."