The acclaimed biographer offers a social history of the poem that helped America fall in love with baseball--a lively story that "hits it out of the park" (The Baltimore Sun).   The sport that came to be known as America's Pastime was still in its infancy when a journalist for the San Francisco Examiner wrote a ballad extolling the drama and excitement of the game. Ernest L. Thayer's Casey at the Bat made its first appearance in the Examiner on June 3, 1888. But the immortal tale of Mighty Casey was destined to become an American phenomenon when star of the New York stage DeWolf Hopper first read it to a rapt audience at Wallack's Theater later that year.   For the first time, John Evangelist Walsh tells the story behind the poem and its young journalist author, its unlikely journey from California to New York, and the wave of baseball mania that made it one of the most famous poems in the country. The Night Casey was Born is a portrait of America in the earliest years of its love affair with baseball.