“But there is no joy in Mudville, Mighty Casey has struck out.”

And so it is. A seemingly simple poem ends. At the time of its publication on June 3, 1888, on page 5 of the San Francisco Examiner, author Ernest Lawrence Thayer thought nothing of it. Using “Phin” as his nom de plume, he received $5 for his effort and prepared to write another entry. So why has this epic become so popular?

First, if Casey had hit a homerun, then “Casey at the Bat” would not have had a shelf-life longer than a week. The fairy tale ending of “and they all lived happily ever after” is as old as “Jack and the Bean Stalk.” We are all Casey. We all strike out – literally and/or figuratively. It’s life.

Next, a piece of literature that probes the intellect and leads into contested questions has a chance to survive. For example, whom do you blame in Sophocles’ seminal tragedy “Oedipus Rex”? Do you understand the behavior of the character Hamlet? Do you hesitate to find Dimsdale cuplable in “The Scarlet Letter”? Why does Casey fail? Is he a tragic hero? Too much hubris?

Finally, Yale professor William Lyon Phelps in 1934 gave “Casey at the Bat” quite an endorsement: “The epic poem is absolute perfection. The psychology of the hero and the psychology of the crowd leave nothing to be desired. There is more knowledge of human nature displayed in this poem than in many works of the psychiatrist. It is the tragedy of destiny; our ability to accomplish any feat is in inverse ratio to the intensity of our desire.”

So go find a copy of “Casey at the Bat.” Read it; like it; live it. But don’t let two good pitches go by.

Morton Soule is a teacher of the Latin language at Cape Elizabeth High School.