Tinker Evers Chance Collage v3 1911 Turkey Red Cabinets T3

Tinker to Evers to Chance... more

by Bright Bros

Title

Tinker Evers Chance Collage v3 1911 Turkey Red Cabinets T3

Artist

Bright Bros

Medium

Photograph - Antique Baseball Card

Description

Tinker to Evers to Chance

It is one of baseball’s most famous poems, up there with “Casey at the Bat.” Some call it “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon.” It’s probably better known as “Tinker to Evers to Chance,” about the 1910 Chicago Cubs’ middle infield of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance.

From Wikipedia:

"Baseball's Sad Lexicon," also known as "Tinker to Evers to Chance" after its refrain, is a 1910 baseball poem by Franklin Pierce Adams. The eight-line poem is presented as a single, rueful stanza from the point of view of a New York Giants fan watching the Chicago Cubs infield of shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance complete a double play. These three players helped the Cubs win four National League championships [often at the expense of the Giants] and two World Series from 1906 to 1910.

"Baseball's Sad Lexicon" became popular across the United States among sportswriters, who wrote their own verses along the same vein. The poem only enhanced the reputations of Tinker, Evers, and Chance over the succeeding decades as the phrase became synonymous with a feat of smooth and ruthless efficiency. It has been credited with their elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.

The poem was first published in the New York Evening Mail on July 12, 1910, under the title "That Double Play Again." The day before, the Cubs had defeated the Giants, 4–2, in Chicago, having squelched a late-inning Giants rally with a double play from Tinker to Evers to Chance.

These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double  –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

(For those who don’t speak 1910, “gonfalon” means “pennant,” and a “double” in this case is a “double play.)

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball%27s_Sad_Lexicon)

Uploaded

December 31st, 2020