DeWolf Hopper Sr.

Short Biography

Best-known for performing the most popular baseball poem, "Casey at the Bat." Filmed as one of the first talkies, 5 years before The Jazz Singer (1927), Casey at the Bat (1922), was included in Ken Burns' Baseball (1994). Hopper, a fervent New York Giant fan, first performed the then-unknown poem to the Giants and Chicago Cubs, on the day his friend, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Tim Keefe had his record 19 game winning streak stopped, August 14, 1888. The dying General William T. Sherman was also in the audience that evening, along with Keefe and his brother-in-law shortstop/attorney John Montgomery Ward. 2 months later the Giants won New York's first world championship.Hopper recited Casey for almost 40 years in films, on stage, records, radio etc. Known as the "Husband of His Country" for his 6 marriages. He became totally hairless, with blue-tinged skin, possibly from reaction to a patent medicine. Even so, his powerful voice and great sense of humor mesmerized women all his life. One of his wives was the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Their son, the white-maned William Hopper, played private investigator Paul Drake on Perry Mason for many years.