Baseball dreams

LAWRENCE -- Ten minutes with Robert Muldoon, and I'm not sure whether he's breathtakingly brilliant or completely nuts. In fact, he may be both.

We were standing together inside a gated park in front of a hulking yellow house one morning this week when Muldoon began reciting stanzas of ''Casey at the Bat." I shouldn't have been surprised. He recited the entire poem to the Lawrence Historical Commission a few weeks earlier, just as he used to do for an uncle some 35 years ago.

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

In short, Muldoon has it in his head that Casey can save Lawrence, birthplace of the author, Ernest Lawrence Thayer.

We met in front of Thayer's birth house, a rambling Victorian long since converted to apartments. It sits on what was once an undoubtedly stunning courtyard, though these days, the iron gates are falling down, the grass is torn up by tire tracks, and an orange construction barrel lies near a half-empty bottle of Orange Crush -- color coordinated trash.

Muldoon wants to commemorate Thayer's birthplace with a plaque, which sounds like a quaint, if ineffectual, idea. The Historical Commission approved his request with barely a thought.

Muldoon explained: ''I said, 'Great, does that mean the plaque goes up?' They said, 'No, we need funding.' I said, 'How do we get that?' They said, 'You.' "

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

I remain skeptical. Famous people are a dime a dozen, as are the plaques that mark their lives.

But Muldoon, an Andover native who works for a Worcester company, doesn't just want a plaque. He wants the whole 52-line poem on two stone pillars at the entrance of the park. And he really envisions a whole new civic identity. These days, you think Lawrence, you think insurance scams. You think endless acres of old mills. You think of a school superintendent who couldn't pass an English proficiency exam.

Muldoon wants you to think of Casey, to think of poetry, to think of schoolchildren who memorize the nation's most famous poem as a rite of passage, then recite it in assemblies packed with applauding friends and parents.

''I could easily see, if you got a plaque up, how things would roll off it," he said.

He sees children vying at an annual contest. He sees David Ortiz helping to celebrate with the city's burgeoning Dominican population. ''Say they did the competition; I could see the winner reciting the poem at Fenway Park," Muldoon said. ''I could see Jay Leno inviting them on his show. He's from Andover. He has a soft spot for the area."

I see John Harrington, the wise head of the Yawkey Foundation, sending $50,000 for the plaque. I see the Red Sox Foundation endowing a contest. I see Lawrence, already embarking on a renaissance, with a new and improved identity. Despite myself, I'm hooked.

Curt Gowdy once said the highlight of his career was reciting ''Casey at the Bat" on stage with the Boston Pops, and he's hardly alone in his love of the poem and his pride in memorizing it.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville -- mighty Casey has struck out."

Can a poem save a city? Robert Muldoon is nuts in a cunning way.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.