How can we allow baseball season to start without considering "."Casey at the Bat" by By Ernest Lawrence Thayer? It is a poem that can provide solace when your sports team loses, is tremendously fun to recite, and always comes to mind when I'm working on a difficult project.
While I live in Houston, in my heart I'll always be a Cubs fan, so I know something about disappointment. My own Casey story was commenting, at the seventh inning stretch with the Cubs leading the Astros 7-3, that I would finally attend a game where the Cubs won. An eight-run eighth inning fixed that fantasy.
I committed Casey to memory in early 1997 and it largely started my recent poety kick. Much of the phrases are fun to say -- "pallor wreathed the features", "maddened thousands", "pounds with cruel violence". By far my favorite part is the crowd reaction to the first strike -- "From the benches black with people there arose a muffled roar" start very quiet, crescendo toward "stern and distant shore". Now picture a Walter Mathau character, in his tattered jersey, yelling "Kill him, kill the umpire" -- there is a certain voice we've all heard at ballgames.
Where is the connection to tough projects? To be honest, I'm not sure. I'll simply offer as evidence that in 1997 I was working on an extremely demanding project -- many late nights, mandatory 6 day weeks, design work nearly up to deployment. Perhaps its the feeling of "the outlook not being brillant". It could be the "ease in ones manner" that you have to adopt. Maybe even the general feeling that a silver bullet, whether it is a Casey, some management change, or some new software, will win the game.
It is just as likely the feeling one gets, sitting in a nearly empty office working into the night, that "a band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light..."
Enjoy
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