Baseball players and opera singers may seem unlikely teammates, but March 16-17 the Greensboro Grasshoppers and the Opera Theatre at the UNCG School of Music will join forces for an evening of free, family entertainment. A rain date is scheduled for March 18.

Billed as “An Evening at First Horizon Park: The Mighty Casey,” the event will include concessions, music, art, and sports, all at Greensboro’s new stadium, First Horizon Park. Audiences will get a preview look at the new park, which will host its first game April 3, when the Grasshoppers play the Florida Marlins.

“This will be a one-of-a-kind event, a slice of Americana,” said David Holley, director of opera theatre at UNCG. “There’s the beauty of the new ballpark, the children’s activities, the instrumental and vocal music, the food, the dramatic reading of a classic poem by the former N.C. Poet Laureate, then the dramatization of the poem, using high-tech video and audio with all the bells and whistles the Jumbotron scoreboard has to offer.”

The festivities will begin at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, March 16-17, with family-friendly activities and performances by The Storyville Skinners Dixieland Jazz Band and barbershop quartets, which will welcome visitors to the bunting-clad ball field. At 6:15 p.m., the UNCG Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs, the Greensboro Tarheel Chorus and the “Skinners” will present a concert.

The event will continue with welcoming remarks by Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday, and a reading of Ernest Thayer’s famous poem “Casey at the Bat” by Fred Chappell, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina and retired UNCG English professor. The poem was written in 1888 and describes the fateful day when the exulted baseball player Casey was called upon to save the losing Mudville team, only to strike out. Disney made the tall tale into an animated short in 1946.

Around 7:15, the UNCG Opera Theatre will put the story to music, using William Schuman’s one-act opera, "The Mighty Casey." Players recruited from Alan Ashkinzy’s Greensboro Batting Center will help dramatize the plot while an 80-member chorus made up from the UNCG Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs, donning early 1880s attire provided by Eastern Costume, sings from behind home plate. Fans perched in the 8,000 seat stadium will have a close-up view of the singers and actors, broadcast on a 66-foot scoreboard.

The UNCG Opera Theatre performed “The Mighty Casey” for more than 6,000 Guilford County elementary school children during the first week of March as part of its ongoing mission to expose children to the arts who might not otherwise have had access.

“An Evening at First Horizon Park: The Mighty Casey” is sponsored by the Greensboro Grasshoppers, the UNCG School of Music, the Greensboro News & Record, The Weaver Foundation, and The Bryan Foundation. For more details, call the UNCG Opera Theatre at (336) 334-5126.