Tinker to Evers to Chance

English

WOTD – 5 March 2012

Alternative forms

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

  • (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 with 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

References

  1. Adams, Franklin Pierce (1910 July 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

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