Background

Ernest Lawrence Thayer was born on August 14, 1863, in Lawrence, Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. He was a son of Edward Davis Thayer and Ellen (Darling) Thayer. His father was a president of American Woolen Mills and traced his family line to a pair of English settlers who came to Mendon, Massachusetts, in 1633. He had two brothers.

Education

Ernest Lawrence Thayer attended Harvard University from 1881 to 1885, as was the family tradition, and there developed his lifelong preoccupation with philosophy. He studied with William James, brother of Henry James and one of the foremost articulators of "pragmatism," a philosophy that sought to bridge the gap between materialistic and idealistic philosophies. Thayer admired James enormously, and they became fast friends.

Career

While at Harvard, Ernest Lawrence Thayer studied with William James and also worked diligently as one of the editors of the Harvard Lampoon (1883 - 1885), becoming president of the magazine in his senior year. Thayer was in good company - one of his fellow editors was Spanish-born poet and philosopher, George Santayana, who compared Thayer to Mercutio, the wry commentator of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

As was not an uncommon practice for newly graduated men at the time, he did not enter commercial life right away but took a tour of Europe for several months. Upon his return, he set about finding a job. As it happened, the business manager of the Harvard Lampoon had been newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who had only just purchased the San Francisco Examiner. Thayer moved to San Francisco and joined the Examiner’s editorial staff in 1886, contributing an occasional comic column under the nom de plume, "Phin". His contact with Santayana seemed to have given him a pronounced interest in poetry, and he began writing ballads for the Sunday sections.

In the winter of 1887, Thayer suffered severe health problems that forced him to resign his position on the editorial staff. He returned home to Worcester, Massachusetts, and spent several months working in the family business, but continued to contribute material to the Examiner - one of these pieces was the now legendary ballad "Casey at the Bat." It first appeared in the Examiner on June 3, 1888.

After writing "Casey at the Bat," Thayer’s literary output dwindled. Once again he returned to Europe and traveled extensively. He moved to Santa Barbara, California, in 1912. During World War I he participated in various home service campaigns. However, as Thayer grew older, his health continually failed him, and he retired prematurely. In Santa Barbara, he set himself to more demanding intellectual work, producing a number of scholarly essays and brief tracts on philosophical points, most of which remain unpublished. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage on August 21, 1940, at his home.

Achievements

• Ernest Lawrence Thayer was best known as the author of the most famous baseball poem of all time, Casey at the Bat. It became an American classic.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Casey At the Bat

    (A baseball team from the fictional town of "Mudville" (im...)

    1905

Membership

Ernest Lawrence Thayer was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, the theatrical society of Harvard University. He came into contact with a wide range of the country's rich and soon to be powerful people. One of these was William Randolph Hearst who came from one of the most prominent families in the United States at the time.

Connections

On September 9, 1913, Ernest Lawrence Thayer married Rosalind Buel Hammett, a granddaughter of a fairly prominent historian, James William Buel.

Father:

Edward Davis Thayer

Mother:

Ellen Maria Thayer

Spouse:

Rosalind Buel Hammett

Brother:

Albert Smith Thayer

Brother:

Edward Davis Thayer

Friend:

William James

Friend:

William Randolph Hearst

References

• Contemporary Authors
  1998