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."

Franklin P. Adams’s lines come from his famous baseball poem “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” written in the early 1910s when the Chicago Cubs’ infield—shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance—was renowned for turning quick double plays. The poem reflects the perspective of a New York Giants supporter, for whom the Cubs’ defensive efficiency repeatedly spoiled rallies. “Gonfalon” (a banner) evokes the Giants’ pennant hopes being punctured. The verse helped fix the trio’s names in popular memory beyond sports pages, contributing to their later mythic status in baseball lore.

The poem dramatizes how a simple, routine-sounding sequence of names can become emotionally charged through repeated disappointment. “Tinker to Evers to Chance” is presented as a kind of fatal incantation: a compact phrase that, to the opposing fan, signifies rallies cut short and hopes deflated. Adams mixes mock-heroic diction (“gonfalon”) with the everyday mechanics of the double play, turning sports frustration into lyric lament. The “sad lexicon” is not inherently tragic; it becomes “heavy with nothing but trouble” because memory and rivalry load it with meaning—showing how language can carry the weight of experience.