It is as perfect an epitome of our national game to-day as it was when every player drank his coffee from a mustache cup. There are one or more Caseys in every league, bush or big, and there is no day in the playing season that this same supreme tragedy, as stark as Aristophanes for the moment, does not befall on some field. It is unique in all verse in that it is not only funny and ironic, but excitingly dramatic, with the suspense built up to a perfect climax. There is no lame line among the fifty-two. And so, although it might be thought I should have had my fill of Casey, I hope to go to bat with him for as many more seasons before we both strike out. I am not yet being pushed on to the stage in a wheel chair, but when an actor has been before the public as long as I some of his audience come to expect it. I observe and frown upon a tendency to quote Lewis Carroll's lines at me:
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
[93]
