Baseball Tinker to Evers to Chance!

"Baseball's Sad Lexicon"
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."**

Chicago Cubs infielders Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance formed the most memorable double-play combination in the history of baseball. Their consistently solid fielding and hitting led the Cubs to four National League pennants (1906-8, 1910) and two World Series wins (1907-8). The Hall of Fame inducted all three simultaneously in 1946. In 1910, New York newspaper columnist Franklin Pierce Adams immortalized the three ballplayers in a short verse.

* The term "gonfalon" refers to a flag or pennant, and Adams uses the phrase "pricking our gonfalon bubble" to describe the repeated success of the Chicago Cubs and their celebrated infield against their National League rivals, his beloved New York Giants.

** Reprinted in the book In Other Words by Franklin P. Adams (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1912), and other, more recent anthologies of his work.

Franklin P. Adams' In Other Words courtesy of The Open Library

The Library of Congress is not aware of any U.S. copyright protection (see Title 17 U.S.C.) or any other restrictions in the Baseball Cards materials.

Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published before 1923 are now in the public domain.

Joe Tinker. Retrieve uncompressed archival TIFF version, CREATED, PUBLISHED 1911. NOTES: Issued by: American Tobacco Company. MEDIUM: 1 photomechanical print. CALL NUMBER: LOT 13163-25, no. 41. Back of Card. Larger reference JPEG version (69 kilobytes) Highest resolution uncompressed TIFF version (15330 kilobytes)

REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZC4-5772 (color film copy transparency of three cards), LC-USZCN4-63 (color film copy negative of three cards). REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. DIGITAL ID: (original) bbc 1383.

John J. Evers. Retrieve uncompressed archival TIFF version, CREATED, PUBLISHED: 1911. NOTES: Issued by: American Tobacco Company MEDIUM: 1 photomechanical print. CALL NUMBER: LOT 13163-25, no. 26. Back of Card: Larger reference JPEG version (70 kilobytes) Highest resolution uncompressed TIFF version (15224 kilobytes)

REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZC4-5772 (color film copy transparency of three cards), LC-USZCN4-63 (color film copy negative of three cards), REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. DIGITAL ID: (original) bbc 1368

Frank J. Chance. Retrieve uncompressed archival TIFF version, CREATED, PUBLISHED 1911. NOTES Issued by: American Tobacco Company. MEDIUM: 1 photomechanical print. CALL NUMBER: LOT 13163-25, no. 25. Back of Card: Larger reference JPEG version (84 kilobytes), Highest resolution uncompressed TIFF version (14873 kilobytes)

REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZC4-5772 (color film copy transparency of three cards), LC-USZCN4-63 (color film copy negative of three cards) REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. DIGITAL ID: (original) bbc 1367

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