Tinker to Evers to Chance

Tinker to Evers to Chance

English

WOTD – 5 March 2012

Alternative forms

• Tinker to Evans to Chance (an error as common as the correct form)

Etymology

A reference to a double play completed by Chicago Cubs shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance, famously eulogized in a poem[1].

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Proper noun

Tinker to Evers to Chance

1. A famous baseball infield double-play combination.

Noun

Tinker to Evers to Chance

1. (US, idiomatic) A task accomplished quickly by well-executed teamwork; those involved in the teamwork.
   • 1957 September, “Can we defend our coasts against Russian subs?”, in Popular Science, volume 171, number 3, page 161:

     The sonarman picks up the enemy, shoots the position to the radar controller sitting near him, and the radar controller, in a Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance play, vectors a hovering helicopter to the spot.

   • 1974, Carl Bernstein; Bob Woodward, All the President's Men, page 256:

     It was like Tinker to Evers to Chance. Colson-Chance then flipped the good news to Hugh Scott, who read Mrs. Beard's denial on the Senate floor that same day.

   • 1990, Traffic world, page 37:

     When it comes to computers, though, systems integration is too often more reminiscent of the Keystone Kops than Tinker to Evers to Chance.

   • 1998, Allen B. Weisse, The staff and the serpent, page 61:

     Prothrombin-to-thrombin-to-fibrin had a Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance simplicity that was 100 percent American in some way.

   • 2001, Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark, page 204:

     Spiegel caught the names Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, whom he gathered were a kind of upscale Tinker to Evers to Chance.

   • 2008, Nancy Kriplen, The eccentric billionaire: John D. MacArthur-- empire builder, reluctant, page 67:

     ... a financial Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance operation involving Bankers Life and Casualty, plus an old company called Hotel Men's Mutual Benefit Association, ....

See also

• hot potato

References

1. Adams, Franklin Pierce (1910-07-12), “Baseball's Sad Lexicon”, in New York Evening Mail: “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.””

Further reading

• Baseball's Sad Lexicon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia