Ode To Opening Day of the 2024 Baseball Season

Tinker to Evers to Chance

Major League Baseball in USA officially opened Thursday, March 28, 2024

Back in the day when baseball was in its infancy, most fans couldn't attend the games in person but boy oh boy they turned on their radios to listen to play by play accounts. And if they had a few cents to spare, they read stories of the games in newspapers the next day.

If they happened to read the July 12, 1910 edition of The New York Evening Mail they read this anthemic fifty-word column by Franklin Pierce Adams.

Baseball’s Sad Lexicon

By Franklin Pierce Adams

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.”

Pierce turned words as nimbly as Tinker, Evers and Chance turned a double play for the Chicago Cubs.

Adams' column should be featured in the Hall of Fame right beside the names of shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers and first baseman Frank Chance.

Peanuts, popcorn, and crackerjacks...Tinker, Evers, and Chance.

Comments

[Myke Farricker]

Great job! What a phrase - "pricking our gonfalon bubble"!

[Paul A Tamburello, Jr aka pt at large]

Reporters for competing newspapers sat in the press box high above the playing field behind home plate.The clacking of their typewriters ceased the minute they finished composing their stories and bolted to their the paper's press room to have their stories converted into type for the next edition.

[Gerard McMahon]

PT,
Thank You for sharing that!! I remember when I was working at Fenway Park people would Turn on the TV and turn the volume down. Then the radio would be turned on so that you could hear Ned Martin and Jim Woods announce the Play by Play.

Sadly, for some business reason the Red Sox went along with splitting Martin and Woods up to make WEEI happy. There was a lot of swearing by all in the press Dining room that afternoon.

My Cousins in Maine also preferred to listen to the games on the radio rather than the TV.

[Bill Pignato]

Hi Paul

Thanks for passing along. I sent your note to friend who is a big baseball fan, unfortunately a Yankee one.

In turn he sent me this article about Tinker, Evers and Chance about whether the belong in the Hall of Fame. https://www.davidrapp.co/single-post/2018/01/19/who-belongs-in-the-hall-of-fame

The article also notes: Hence the sarcastic judgment that this fabled threesome owes its Hall of Fame credentials more to a poetic play on their names than to their knack for turning two.

BTW since the Red Sox traded Mookie… I have not watched much baseball. My favorite team sport.

Best

Bill

[Paul A Tamburello, Jr aka pt at large]

Bill, I posted your comment that deepens the arc of the story…much appreciated!

And…trading Mookie Betts was the most bone-headed decision that Chaim Bloom ever made. The team never recovered its mojo. And neither did Bloom.
The trio of today’s Red Sox play by play announcers can recite facts and figures but lack the elan and story telling of the old time radio announcers.
Thanks again