Casey at the Bat

by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
 
Featuring 6 newly cast ornaments produced from matrices carved in-house.
 
Widely considered the most famous baseball poem of all time, Casey at the Bat timelessly expresses the agony and ecstasy of cheering for your favorite baseball team. Even though it was written in 1888, one would hardly know it. The game has changed in a myriad of ways since then, but the core drama: the endless duel between pitcher and batter, is laid out perfectly in Thayer's poem. 
 
Since the beginning of 2025, The Prototype Press has been working on testing and producing new matrices on its CNC MicroMill. Through these trials, a set of baseball ornaments were carved in order to test out the printability of type made from this machine. The results were satisfactory, which led to the production of this chapbook. In particular, a two color baseball ornament seen on the title page was made in an effort to test the accuracy and repeatability of the machine. 
 
The poem was cast in 8pt Devinne on a Monotype Composition Caster, with handset display sizes of Devinne throughout. It was printed on old stock handmade paper from the University of Iowa, and covered with a green handmade stock from the Saint Armand paper mill. Pamphlet sewn with red thread. 8 pages in length. Printed in an edition of 50 copies.