A couple of generations ago, it was considered a mark of a thorough American elementary education to have kids memorize things.

Bible verses, in the King James translation. “… and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.”

Writers. In Latin or Greek or Elizabethan English. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers …”

Speeches. “Four score and seven years ago …”

And poets. “Once upon a midnight dreary …”

All these years later, I can still summon up bits of things. Mostly the Bible and a handful of poems, including what probably remains my favorite bit of poetry — or verse.

Casey at the Bat.

Every American should be familiar with Casey at the Bat. And every baseball fan should read it, from time to time, because it is so much fun.

It was written by Ernest Thayer and published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1888, which is a long time ago, by American standards, but it still remains relevant.

Several phrases from the poem can still be heard with some regularity. “The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day.” … “So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat” (Perhaps the best phrase in the poem.) “Oh, somewhere in this favored land …” and “mighty Casey has struck out.”

Casey at the Bat just pops into my head, from time to time, and I inevitably go to read the whole thing again, perhaps surprised by one or two things I didn’t quite remember, realizing I can reel off almost entire verses … and marveling at how the account could, with some changes of aged verbiage, be recited today — and understood by modern fans.

Is it a vivid account of the bottom of the ninth inning of a game the home team is losing 4-2, when a single and a double with two outs brings up Mighty Casey, the team’s slugger.

And the shock of the 13th (and last) verse can still be seen in the faces of those listening to the poem for the first time. It is so not where we thought the poem was going to go. (Try it on a Little Leaguer sometime … if you can get him to listen that long.)

The wiki entry includes a cultural treasure, a 1920 recording of an actor named DeWolf Hopper who is reciting the poem — which he apparently did, for money, at least 10,000 times.

It is fascinating to listen to Hopper’s reading of the poem, and to realize how a dramatic reading from less than a century ago now seems … ridiculous. Especially the voices Hopper invents.

Pop culture certainly changes radically every few years — even if baseball and its most famous poen hardly does.