Commissioned by the National Pastime Museum to create a work based on the famous baseball poem by Ernest Thayer, my version of “Casey At The Bat” is based on the most famous of marquee match-ups in Negro League baseball: Satchel Paige vs. Josh Gibson. As I was finishing this painting and moving to complete the background, the leaves were turning outside and the World Series was unfolding on my television. My initial conception of a sultry summer match-up turned toward the cold, hard facts of autumn instead.  As the poem was written in it’s time during the late 1800’s, I decided to include the courthouse from my hometown, built in the same era, to subtly remind us that baseball is a game of rules and judgments.  The factory on the other side of town has more obvious connotations.