Casey at The Bat - Mudville

Mudville

A rivalry of sorts has developed between two cities claiming to be the Mudville described in the poem.

Residents of Holliston, Massachusetts, where there is a neighborhood called Mudville, claim it as the Mudville described in the poem. Thayer grew up in nearby Worcester, Massachusetts, where he wrote the poem in 1888; his family owned a woolen mill less than a mile from Mudville's baseball field.

However, residents of Stockton, California — which was known for a time as Mudville prior to incorporation in 1850—also lay claim to being the inspiration for the poem. In 1887, Thayer covered baseball for The San Francisco Examiner—owned by his Harvard classmate William Randolph Hearst—and is said to have covered the local California League team, the Stockton Ports. For the 1902 season, after the poem became popular, Stockton's team was renamed the Mudville Nine. The team reverted to the Mudville Nine moniker for the 2000 and 2001 seasons. The Visalia Rawhide, another California League team, currently keep Mudville alive by playing in Mudville jerseys on June 3 each year.

Despite the towns' rival claims, Thayer himself told the Syracuse Post-Standard that "the poem has no basis in fact."

Residents of Marshalltown, Iowa (home of Hall of Famer Cap Anson) often refer to their town as Mudville, though possibly for reasons of irreverence having little to do with Anson's former residency.