Tinker to Evers to Chance

Tinker to Evers to Chance

A legendary baseball double-play. The phrase is used as the refrain in the poem "Baseball's Sad Lexicon" by Franklin Piece Adams. It refers to three Chicago Cubs players from the early 20th century: Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance. I wish I had been born in an earlier era, so that I could have seen Tinker to Evers to Chance—not to mention Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and all the famous players of yore.
See also: chance, Ever, tinker
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • albatross (a)round (one's) neck
  • albatross around one's neck
  • albatross round someone's neck
  • an albatross around your neck
  • no joy in Mudville
  • not with a bang but a whimper
  • not with a bang but with a whimper
  • whimper
  • take the road less traveled
  • hold one's tongue, to
References in periodicals archive
"These are the saddest of possible words: 'Tinker to Evers to Chance.'" --F.
"Tinker to Evers to Chance." [The remaining lines omitted by demand.] "Nunquam," by Adams, in his column "Always in Good Humor," New York Evening Mail, August 3, 1910, p.
"Tinker to Evers to Chance." Whom do the Giants consistently blame?
That trio of diamond romance Vanished with Nineteen-O-Ten; "Tinker to Evers to Chance"-- It never can happen again!
Gone like the rhyme that they gave us Of "Tinker to Evers to Chance." A new one has just been invented, The Giants all think it immense, Though it drives certain twirlers demented, It's "Pitcher to Doyle to the fence." "Summer's Bright Lexicon," by Adams, in his column "The Conning Tower," Boston Traveler and Evening Herald, July 19,1912, p.
"Why rave about 'Tinker to Evers to Chance'" A Boston baseball bug inquires, "When that bunch is only a mere circumstance "'To Maranville to Sweeney to Myers.'" "From Doolan to Dolan to Dooin," in the column "Baseball By-Plays," Sporting News, July 24, 1913, p.
"Whatever you say about Murphy is so," Says Tinker to Evers to Chance. "And telling the truth is to libel him, bo," Says Tinker to Evers to Chance.
A neat little verse could always be turned Without going into a trance When a writer could use that euphonious line-- "Tinker to Evers to Chance." But times became bad and soon we were forced Some grammatical crimes to commit When we wished to write of a play that was scored "Maranville to Evers to Schmidt." Shades of Byron and Burns!
Thirteen swift summers have sped since that rhyme Made a bard famous; and up to this time No one plays balls like that trio sublime, Tinker to Evers to Chance. Do you remember, in spite of your age, Many and Three-fingered Brown?
Remember old Cubs ball park, And Tinker to Evers to Chance, And the good old days when the tango Was considered a wicked dance.
A: The Life and Times of Franklin Pierce Adams (New York: Beaufort Books, 1986), 45, 52, 55-56, 86; Tim Wiles, "Reason for the Rhyme: Adams' 'Baseball's Sad Lexicon' Turns ioo," Memories and Dreams (Summer 2010): 10-13; Will Leonard, "Tinker to Evers to Chance," Chicago History I (Fall 1970): 69-79; Glenn Stout, "Tinker to Evers to Chance," in The Cubs: The Complete Story of Chicago Cubs Baseball (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2007), 40.
(12.) Burt Solomon, The Baseball Timeline: In Association with Major League Baseball (New York: DK Publishing, 2001), 161; "Here are the Words of Verses: Tinker to Evers to Chance," Chicago Daily Tribune, September 18, 1924, 20.
(14.) Bruce Chadwick, "Tinker to Evers to Chance," in The Chicago Cubs: Memories and Memorabilia of the Wrigley Wonders (New York: Abbeville Press, 1994), 40.
See also Jerome Holtzman and George Vass, "Tinker to Evers to Chance," in The Chicago Cubs Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 365.
(27.) Grantland Rice, "Tinker to Evers to Chance," Collier's, November 29, 1930, 11; Lane, "Joseph Tinker," 46.
Franklin P. Adams's "trio of bear cubs"