In 'Casey at the Bat,' a metaphor is used to compare the crowd's sense of hope to a living being in a life-and-death situation, which highlights their emotional state during the game.
One example of a metaphor in the poem “Casey at the bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer is when he describes the hope of the crowd, whose situation was “grave”, derived from the setting that their chances were dying. This compares the feeling of hope to a living entity that could be close to death, thereby personifying hope and equating the situation to a life-and-death circumstance. It vividly represents the emotional state of the audience as they watch the baseball game, hoping for success but teetering on the edge of despair.