"Baseball's Sad Lexicon," also known as "Tinker to Evers to Chance" after its refrain, is a 1910 baseball poem by Franklin Pierce Adams. The eight-line poem is presented as a single, rueful stanza from the point of view of a New York Giants fan watching the Chicago Cubs infield of shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance complete a double play. These three players helped the Cubs win four National League championships and two World Series from 1906 to 1910. "Baseball's Sad Lexicon" became popular across the United States among sportswriters, who wrote their own verses along the same vein. The poem only enhanced the reputations of Tinker, Evers, and Chance over the succeeding decades as the phrase became synonymous with a feat of smooth and ruthless efficiency. It has been credited with their elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. Publication The poem was first published in the New York Evening Mail on July 12, 1910, under the title "That Double Play Again." The day before, the Cubs had defeated the Giants, 4–2, in Chicago, having squelched a late-inning Giants rally with a double play from shortstop Tinker to second baseman Evers to first baseman Chance. Per standard baseball positions, this play is recorded as 6-4-3 (shortstop to second baseman to first baseman). Background Tinker, Evers, and Chance began playing together with the Cubs in September 1902, forming a double play combination that lasted through April 1912. The Cubs won the National League pennant four times from 1906 to 1910 and won back-to-back World Series championships in 1907 and 1908, a five-year span that saw them regularly defeat their archrival Giants en route to the pennants and World Series. Context in baseball history Frank Chance joined the Chicago Cubs in 1898 as a reserve catcher, backing up Tim Donahue and Johnny Kling. Frank Selee, the Cubs' manager, decided that Chance would be better suited as a first baseman. Chance at first opposed the move and even threatened to quit, but he ultimately obliged. Joe Tinker was a third baseman in minor league baseball but in 1902 made the Cubs as a shortstop, replacing Barry McCormick. Johnny Evers made his major league debut with the Cubs on September 1, 1902 at shortstop, with Selee moving Tinker from shortstop to third base. Three days later, Selee returned Tinker to shortstop and assigned Evers