It Takes More Than Balls by Diedre Silva

Author:Diedre Silva
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2011-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Enquiring Mitts Want to Know

Some infield combinations are known for defensive prowess. Other infields operate like sieves. What makes the difference? There are some secrets as to how infielders work together. Much of the necessary teamwork has to do with keeping focused, knowing what the count is, and having a plan of action should the ball come your way. Then there are those teams that act like old married couples. Just as the 1950s sitcom world had the strangely chaste marriage between Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and today’s reality TV world has the strangely indifferent marriages of the “Real Housewives of New York City,” the baseball world will always have the enchanted memory of Tinker to Evers to Chance. Huh? Pass the popcorn.

While the prospect of a threesome may have made Lucy blush, this trio of infielders would have excited Ricky, who off-screen was a big baseball fan. Shortstop (6) Joe Tinker, second baseman (4) Johnny Evers and first baseman (3) Frank Chance together made the most famous 6-4-3 double play combination in baseball history while playing for the Chicago Cubs at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1910 a New York Evening Magazine columnist, Franklin Pierce Adams, memorialized the fielders in his poem “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” written from the point of view of a New York Giants fan:

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.”

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