Prompt: Base
Joe Tinker, Johnny Evans, and Frank Chance
Day 4 of NaNoWriMo and thoughts turn to baseball…
The skill of the legendary infield trio for the Chicago Cubs was immortalized in a poem by New York journalist and Giants fan Franklin Pierce Adams in 1910:
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.”
There has always been something magical about baseball to me— partly because I grew up with it, obviously— and the Cubs in particular. I became a die-hard fan when I lived in Chicago and used to while away lazy afternoons at Wrigley Field. My girlfriend, her toddler in a stroller, and I, eating all-beef dogs and discussing the plays on the field, listening to Harry Carey massacre the seventh inning stretch song.
Yes, I have special memories, as do all Cubs fans. I love the many long-standing traditions of the Cubs most of all, and the legends of players like Tinker, Evers, and Chance, and how much the team and the field made me love the essence of the game, instead of the noise, the money, the politics, and the scandals.
So, they won the World Series, after 108 years. As Barack Obama pointed out, Thomas Edison was alive in 1908, and sliced bread hadn’t been invented yet.
Cool. Go Cubbies.
- More about Tinker, Evers, and Chance at WrigleyIvy.com
Fluffy Pool 