Flashback Friday: "Casey at the Bat" and Stockton's Unique Baseball History

So much of our society today is focused on looking to what's next and leaving the past in the dust.

It's human nature. We are always intrigued by the possibility of the future. Now, with the entire world on pause and millions of people across the world cooped up inside we're forced to look back.

At both the good and bad times, history defines all people and shapes the future whether we know the successes or failures that preceded.

Few American cities have the baseball history that Stockton, California possesses. Every baseball fan knows the epic poem "Casey at the Bat," but I'm sure many aren't aware that the epic is claimed to have been based on events that transpired in present day San Joaquin County.

Prior to Stockton's incorporation in 1850, the town was called Mudville which might sound familiar to baseball and Ports fans alike. Casey famously played for the Mudville Nine a team that's almost mythical in nature for the modern baseball fan.

Casey's author Ernest Thayer painted a comedic and poetic scene of a country that was discovering this great game. A nation that was still in its infancy that had no idea of the looming wars in the next century as they enjoyed their new pastime and peace.

A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, Thayer made his pilgrimage west after graduating from Harvard and was hired as a humor columnist by the San Francisco Examiner. The man who hired him? None other than William Randolph Hurst, who developed America's largest newspaper chain and media company.

Talk about an eye for talent.

Casey's epic strikeout first reached readers in Northern California on June 3, 1888 in what was Thayer's final contribution to the paper. However, it didn't become a sensation until it was read aloud to the public at the Wallack Theater in New York City on August 4, 1888.

On Thayer's 25th birthday.

It quickly became a radio sensation as the public loved the story of cocky Casey being taken down a peg in humorous fashion. A story of fans going home unhappy after a loss resonates with fans of all sports worldwide, even when going to the ballpark was a black tie affair.

While nobody can say definitively that the events of "Casey at the Bat" are accurate and took place in California's central valley, baseball and Stockton took off from that day forward.

As a charter franchise of the California League, Ports baseball came to fruition in 1941 and has fielded a ball club every year of play in the Golden State.

The team's proud of its history surrounding baseball's most famous poem, going so far as to change the team's name to the Mudville Nine for the 2000 and 2001 seasons.

Even to this day, as Banner Island Ballpark stands proudly on the same spot where the Mudville nine played the game in the late 1800s.

Following his career in newspapers, Thayer settled into retirement in Santa Barbara, California where he passed away on August 21, 1940 at the age of 77.

One year before the Ports inaugural season.