Today is the anniversary of the first publication of the poem “Casey at the Bat“, by Ernest L. Thayer. It appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on June 3rd, 1888.
How quaint to think that there was once a time when a single poem could be widely known and symbolic of a national pastime. I love popular poems mainly for the opportunity they present for parody, and Casey at the Bat is a favorite.
The perfect poetic parody storm happened (for me) in 2002 when the great slugger Ted Williams died, and his family battled over the remains. One faction wanted Williams cremated, the other wanted him frozen at a cryonics lab in Arizona for possible re-animation sometime in the future. Of course.
The refrigerators won, and in the process I got a chance to imagine how it would all turn out on some distant sunny afternoon.
“What is science fiction, anyway, but something that might happen in the future?”
Dr. Jerry B. Lemler, chief executive, ALCOR Life Extension Foundation
(NY Times, Wednesday, July 10, 2002)
With apologies to Ernest L. Thayer –
The outlook, it was dismal for the Joyville nine that day:
The year was 2502, One inning left to play.
The fan base had eroded so, this game would be the last.
The one time national pastime’s time, alas, had finally passed.A somber group of gravediggers were warming up their arms.
They prepared to bury baseball, the big teams and the farms.
A-Grieving in the bleachers the remaining faithful sat.
“If only we could liberate Ted Williams from his vat!”For baseball’s mighty slugger had been frozen when he died.
They froze his sacred arms and wrists, they froze his rugged hide.
They froze him in the hope that he might someday un-retire.
But no one thought the sport itself would sicken, then expire.And then from many thousand throats there rose as one, a breath.
A gasp of shock, surprise and glee, of victory o’er death.
For in the batter’s circle, for the multitudes to greet
In suspended animation, there hung Williams by his feet.There was frost upon his biceps as they opened up his case.
Liquid Nitrogen was dripping from the creases on his face.
How the faithful cheered their legend as the slugger was unpacked
How he tipped his hat to greet them! How his knees and elbows cracked!Now he stood there stiffly-legged as the light began to die
The pitcher hurled a bullet. Williams watched as it went by.
The catcher muttered softly “You took that one like a chump.”
“I’m adjusting to the temperature,” he said. “Strike!” said the ump.The tumult from the bleachers was amazing to behold.
Not a fan among them noticed that the bat was green with mold.
Now his eyes returned an icy glare, he curled his frozen lip.
Now his red socks were de-icing. Now his cap began to drip.Then came another missive from that demon on the mound.
Showing every indication it would splutter to the ground.
But then it rose, Phoenix-like, ’til level with his belt.
“Strike two!” The umpire said, as Williams felt his shoulders melt.In the catered suites around the park the corporate sponsors groaned.
In the press box doing play-by-play, the glib announcers moaned.
In the stands, prevailing wisdom was, the greatest one had choked.
At the plate, the catcher noticed that the batter’s box was soaked.For the frost upon the slugger’s brow had turned into slush.
His uniform was sodden and his mitt was leather mush.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now it’s on its way.
And now the air’s alive with a ferocious swing and spray.Oh somewhere there’s a field of dreams with bleachers by the surf.
And somewhere bands are playing on some soggy outfield turf.
Although mostly it is dusty by the plate where umpires shout,
There’s a pool of mud in Joyville, for Ted Williams has thawed out.
Your frozen remains have just been brought back to life in a word quite different from the one you left. Comments?
Trail Baboon 
Ick. But it would make a great zombie movie..
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
I’m melting, I’m melting, I’m melting.
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Bring me those socks I haven’t finished yet-and get out the applique quilt while you’re at it.
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Uhhh . . . which frozen remains got thawed? Did you thaw the 83-year-old version of me, the one that had every unattractive and systematic dysfunction of old age? Did you restore me to the condition I was in at the end of my natural life–with bumpy skin and thick toenails–when I was fixin’ to die of one thing or another?
If that’s what you did, pardon me for not showering you with gratitude! I’ve always thought the nicest part of dying was that you only had to do it once.
Or did you thaw a version of me dating back to when I was cute and fit and lusty and I didn’t snore? Does this thing you thawed look like that version of me looked in that summer when Kathy Larson so generously gave me kissing lessons? In that case cue the voice of Gomer Pyle: Thankyew, thankyew, thankyew!
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By the way, someone needs to say the obvious: this poem is Dale at his incomparable best. There isn’t a poet, frozen or thawed, who can beat Dale at this kind of thing. Dante’s Inferno is an ambitious poem, but what fool would rank it with Dale’s untitled poem today? Well done, sir, well done!
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There’s Dante’s Inferno and Dale’s Referno.
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By the way, I hope somebody appreciates the open-ended nature of the Trail Baboon culture machine. Where else do you find Gomer Pyle and Dante paired up? Baboons are not too stuffy to appreciate the whole world from the subterranean nemotodes just discovered (“worms from hell”) to outer space. Now we know what a liberal education was preparing us for.
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Nobody does it better. Makes me feel sad for the rest. Nobody does it half as good as him. Baby, he’s the beast.
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beast… like cleaver?
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Twoshay!
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BRRRRRRRRR
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here, I’ll knit you a sweater…just as soon as I finish those socks.
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A few absorbent soft rags might be useful, too.
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ah, cotton washclothes, very quick, very easy-thanks Steve-I’ll try to get those done BEFORE we all hit the cooler!
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We are still using cotton washcloths knit by my grandmother – who has been dead (with no hope of reanimation) for 7 years. There were enough of them tucked away in her apartment that we gave everyone who came to her memorial service a cloth. And we still had enough for family to have several. She enjoyed knitting and as her eyes got worse and her hands more arthritic, it was something she could still knit (probably knit them in her sleep, too).
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good for her!
Steve makes a good point-I’ll be ok if the sight is impaired (as long as there are recorded books), but I sure hope the hands are still functional (and the brain, hope the zombies haven’t eaten it by then)!
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Can you turn on a few more lights, please? I’ve been in the dark for some time and I’d like some nice, bright light. (The future always seems dark and poorly lit in the movies – I’d like better lighting, thank you.)
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funny, Anna– the s&h came into the world demanding better lighting. That overhead fluorescent in NICU just made him wail. His lighting designer father was so proud!
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Love it.
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ted williams what a sad ending to a great mans legacy. the last i heard they foroze him but his head is not attatched. i also read about the kryonics guys wheo ahve all these bodies to be responsible for but the electricity goes out and the vats crack under the continual use and the bodies are likely not any good any more but to maintain the contract they keep the liquid nitrogen cranked up and the maintance checks keep coming in…
if i wake up in 2511 and the world is still up and ticking it would be interesting to see how you would adapt to the new ways. imagine the world 500 years ago and all the changes.it is a fun twist to imagine what may be in store. transportation i would expect
jetson like zipmobiles that would wisk you off to wherever in a nanosecond and maybe a bit of captain kirks transporter room reconstituting of the cells form location a to location b but does the coffee that comes along get hotter or colder in the transporter? is it still ok to camp? can you head off in the zipmobile and start a campfire on the side of a mountain in montana? did ebooks make it or how do you access those downloads? is there something else on the video monitors besides disney and fox news? i think it would be cool to get to discuss the times i come from with the current generation but remember the time machine movie where they pretty people in the togas watched the drowning person float by them in total disinterest because the idea of helping someone never occured to them. no new taxes meant that the roads and eduction system all went away and the electric company went bankrupt because the people who kept having their electricity shut off for late payment couldnt get caught up and eventually the trees started growing up through the concrete cracks in the pavement and the buildings transformed into greenhouses or crumbling echo chambers depending on their physical characteristics. new york city and yellowstone park fare differently in the event that power is cut off for 100 years. no wonder they are canceling the baseball seeason.
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Unless I’m mistaken, tim, the story you refer to about the incompetent kryonics guy with a garage full of melting corpses was a “This American Life” story. Hugely creepy and funny at the same time. Some poor dweeb gets the responsibility of keeping all these bodies in good shape for their return to earth, only he can’t afford the electric bill and he keeps getting new bodies, some of which he throws in refrigerators on top of old ones.
I can think of several jobs I’d rather have than babysitting frozen corpses.
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yep that was the one. creeped me out. i think if you came back from that freeze job you may wish you hadn’t.
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this (and Dale’s adaptation of a classic) move me to put in a plug for “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (I’ve given up on italics as a penance)-gross and disgusting and hilarious.
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Good morning to all:
As a person with scientific training, I have a lot of question come regarding coming back to life in the furture after being frozen. Steve has already raised a question whether you would come back as an old person near death or as a younger person. I think the people who decide to be frozen hope that there will medical advances in the future that will keep them alive when they are brought back to life. So maybe if you were frozen you would come back to lfe in a medical facility with doctors working on you to restore your health.
There are many other possible questions about what would happen if people were frozen and latter brought back to life. If a lot of this was done, wouldn’t the world be a heavily over populated? Maybe there would some type of population management where most people are not allowed to reproduce and and most of the frozen people would be kept frozen and not brought back to life. If this is the case there would lots of questions about who would make the decisions about who would allowed to reproduce and who would be brought back to life.
In fact there is no end to the questions that can be raised about the questiuon Dale has put forward. I guess it is best to not to go too far down that road. Perhaps in the future all the big problems will be solved and there will be no need to ask so many questions.
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Dale, you truly are in a class by yourself. Wonderful poem! Thank you for sharing it.
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Oops, you know where this should have gone.
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jim couldnt we just be considered seeds and steal some dna and crank up a new jim or tim or steve if the need arose? start over as many times as you like. gorundhog day with lives instead of days. what a concept.
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Yes, tim, we could just start a DNA storeage to bring people back as clones in the future. I’m suprised that there isn’t some one that has already started offering to save DNA for this purpose. You are the idea man, tim. You should get someone to start doing this.
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Steve and others have already mentioned this – the Ted Williams story seems to get weirder. While the original idea was to thaw his whole body, they apparently removed his head and saved only that on the assumption that once we are technologically able to thaw people and bring them back to life, we will also have a solution for the decapitation conundrum. One of the most bizarre accounts of the fate of Williams’ head in the years since 2002 is that premature thawing had begun and the head had to be moved to a different storage place to be frozen more deeply. Being only a head, it couldn’t sit upright, so they propped it upside down on an open tuna fish can. Naturally, in the more severe cold the can attached itself to the top of his noggin and later had to be knocked off with a monkey wrench. The workman only missed once. So the story goes.
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Oho! Mike Pengra is reading us today. Just played Iris Dement’s classic, “Let the Mystery Be.”
Some say once you’re gone you’re gone forever, and some say you’re gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
Some say that they’re comin’ back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
Good for you, Mike!
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Thanks, Steve.
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Yep – I heard it too. Gotta love Iris. (and Mike)
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That song is one of my favorites. I don’t find many people or songs that want to let the mystery be and I usually get strange looks when I tell people that I wnat to let the mystery be.
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Consider the economics of extending life through cryogenics – in order to preserve yourself, you’d have to have a substantial net worth. That way you could put your assets into a trust and if you invested conservatively you’d have compound interest for 500 years or so. If you were in debt when you contracted the incurable disease, well, who’s going to take you, and who’s going to thaw you out in a few centuries when you are exponentially deeper in debt? No surprise – the rich would live and the poor would die.
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rats-thought I posted this earlier-anyway–
When they freeze you, do they also freeze some nice liquid assests so you have something to be going on with (especially if those assets can compound the whole time)?
and gee, I don’t know about you, but I would feel guilty about hoarding all of that while it could have been out in the world making life a little easier for folks who are, say, alive or something…….
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What would that economy look like? Little consumer spending because no one’s in a position to consume anything. Stagnant housing market, because who needs a house when you’re frozen?
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Yup, just like a bunch of dragons sitting on treasure they neither use nor enjoy.
Of course, this is assuming wealth, economy and all that continue “as we know it”. I always wonder about those sci-fi universes that seem to function without any sort of economy. Solving whatever the plot line crisis is never seems to involve discussions of whether something can be “afforded” or not. you either have a multi-matrix plasma converter induction device or you don’t. If you don’t, you have to find/create something that can do the job, but monetary cost doesn’t enter into it.
I wouldn’t mind living someplace like that for awhile (not just someplace where people pick and choose the economic facts they want to believe that suit their arguement).
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It would depend on what world I woke up in. A lot of the futures depicted in movies are not something I wanta be around for. Might just say “put me back in the deep freeze”, or better yet, just bury me for good.
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Futures depicted in movies often seem to imagine a world where technology has made giant leaps, and at the same time all humor and optimism and human warmth has been stamped out. Why is that? Isn’t it possible that technology can advance and human beings just remain human beings?
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Please let me thaw out somewhere other than Europe – don’t want to catch that new deadly strain of E. coli.
Today’s ah ha – I never noticed before how Tom Waits’ singing can sound like Will Ferrell when he’s doing his Harry Caray bit.
I just saw on the BBC page that Jack Kevorkian died.
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Regarding the demise of Dr. K, I wonder how they knew. He’s looked dead for at least two decades.
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Morning–
Great Poem Dale!
I’ve already joked my knees are so bad I won’t be able to walk when I’m 60 so I hope they froze my wheel chair too. Maybe the ‘floating head’ idea isn’t so bad?
In a related story and changing the names to protect the guilty, the owner of a cold storage warehouse is asking for a ‘Conditional Use Permit’ to install a crematorium INSIDE the cold storage building but in a separate room. Yes, this is true.
He could just stack the bodies up next to the Tombstone pizzas.
What really cracked us up is the permit states: “… to cremate dead human bodies….” — as opposed to?? Pets? Uncle Leo in there with Fido?? Live Human bodies??
Zoning meeting next week on this…
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Keep us posted.
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and I would have thought those meetings would be boring……
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Actually, there are some issues that can make zoning meetings interesting such as new plans for large livestock operations and other land use items. I don’t have a lot of experience with zoning board meetings, but I think it would hard to top the one you are attending, Ben, for it’s unusual topic. Fact is stranger that fiction.
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What kinds if pizza do they offeri think I’d steer clear of the combination
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“Put me back!”
I wonder if you’d have any memory of your previous existence. Would you know, for example, where you put that trust fund you so wisely stashed for this particular moment. Would you know what you were supposed to be doing with this new lease on life.
Seriously. The whole thing creeps me out.
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I agree with you, Krista. Ick.
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The first thing I say: “You call that cold??? Why, when I was a kid…”
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Hah! and … I better not hear any a yous pansies complain about bein’ stiff!
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Does the theory on cryogenics take into account that hair and nails and ears continue to grow. What would we look like of our ears grew for hundreds of years?
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OH! Ick.
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I’d rather be raptured than subjected to the Birdseye treatment and the vagaries of the freeze thaw cycle.
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OT – just heard that James Arness passed away this morning. I’ve always felt an affinity for him, since he went to the same elementary school as the teenager and then went to high school just up the block from my house. I’ll have to watch some Gunsmoke this week in his honor!
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Doing anything to honor Jack Kevorkian?
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thanks for putting “Staying Alive” in my head!
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Can’t think of anything pleasant to watch.
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And I just heard Stephanie Davis the Movie Maven mention that one of James Arness’ early roles was The Thing in The Thing from Another World…
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Yes – that’s true. They chose him because he was so tall!
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Scared the bejeebers out of me. I remember being haunted by that movie.
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The one that got me was “Bodysnatchers” (the original). I was babysitting and it was on tv pretty late at night, the kids were asleep and every creaky little noise made shivers go right up my back!
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I was listening to the first Keepers CD while cleaning the house (a friend of mine did the cover art), and decided to see if I could find you. I have. Thank you.
(No need to post this to the world).
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Welcome to our world on the baboon trail!
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Hey bob where are you
Did you finish cleaning? What’s your favorite song from keepers?
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Dale: Poem is awesome. One more week of school. Mom’s house in Michigan is cleaned out and ready for the new people as of the end of Memorial Day weekend. I am exhausted and glad to be reading Trail Baboon. hi all.
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Welcome back, Holly!
Does this mean we will soon be seeing more of you soon?
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Yeah.
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Woo hoo!
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