Opening Day Advent Calendar: Day 2

Christmas is about hope and new beginnings. It is about possibilities, starting over, and joy. For those of us who love baseball, oftentimes there is more excitement around Opening Day than Christmas for all the same reasons, plus the fact that if everything goes right, you get to feel that excitement every day for more than six months.

For Day 2 we have hope, which springs eternal … however it isn’t always fulfilled. This classic poem tells the story of the Mudville Nine and their Mighty Casey coming to bat with the hero role all but sewn up. However, baseball is designed to breaks hearts:

Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It pounded on the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

Casey at the Bat by Earnest Lawrence Thayer