Mudville – Years of research and investigation has brought controversy to the great game of baseball. Lead investigator, Pearl White, said in a statement to the press that she has strong evidence that Casey, of the famed Casey at the Bat poem, was struck out by an illegal pitch.
Recently, a photograph of the final pitch surfaced in the Cooperstown archives, showing that the pitcher illegal made a small step toward the plate with his foot. This subtle move was missed by the crew officiating the game, and provided the pitcher with an unfair advantage by decreasing the distance from the pitching rubber to the plate by an estimated nine inches. Casey, a notorious fastball hitter, swung and missed on that fateful night that has now gone down in infamy.
It was that encounter, that swing and miss, an illegal pitch, that drove Casey to the bottle, and a once proud community into despair. The Mudville locals, and Casey, never recovered. The next season, the club relocated to St. Louis. Casey would not join the team there, and would die years later in a single vehicle drunk driving incident.
Mudville, it should be noted, would become a shell of its former self. The factory that once offered jobs and a way of life to the locals closed soon after, forcing the community into poverty. Once a great beacon for the American Way of Life, the town is now all but forgotten, and all because one man thought himself above the honor of the game.
“It’s inconceivable to think what could have been,” said Pearl White. “Not just for the town of Mudville, but for Casey. Had that pitch never happened, or at least ruled correctly, Casey would have had another opportunity to showcase his God-given ability. Instead, we’ll just have to live with the sad story of his spiral into alcoholism.”