"Casey at the Bat" is a poem by which of the following?

"Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888" is a mock-heroic poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer.

It was first published anonymously in "The San Francisco Examiner" (then called "The Daily Examiner") on June 3, 1888, under the pen name "Phin", based on Thayer's college nickname, "Phinney".

A baseball team from the fictional town of "Mudville" (the home team) is losing by two runs in its last inning. Both the team and its fans, a crowd of 5,000, believe that they can win if Casey, Mudville's star player, gets to bat. However, Casey is scheduled to be the fifth batter of the inning, and the first two batters (Cooney and Barrows) fail to get on base. The next two batters (Flynn and Jimmy Blake) are perceived to be weak hitters with little chance of reaching base to allow Casey a chance to bat.

Surprisingly, Flynn hits a single, and Blake follows with a double that allows Flynn to reach third base. Both runners are now in scoring position and Casey represents the potential winning run. Casey is so sure of his abilities that he does not swing at the first two pitches, both called strikes. On the last pitch, the overconfident Casey strikes out swinging, ending the game and sending the crowd home unhappy.

Ernest Lawrence Thayer (August 14, 1863 – August 21, 1940) was an American writer and poet who wrote the poem "Casey at the Bat", which is "the single most famous baseball poem ever written" according to the "Baseball Almanac".