Moore as the "acting version" of the three baseball players The poem's title has also been used to characterize any process that happens with smoothness and precision, as a near-synonym to expressions such as "like clockwork" or "a well-oiled machine." For example: In Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye (1953), detective Philip Marlowe goes through his mail, opens it, and tosses it into the waste bin, remarking, "Mail slot to desk to wastebasket, Tinker to Evers to Chance." The Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward used the phrase "Tinker to Evers to Chance" in their account of the Post investigation of the Watergate scandal in their 1974 book, All the President's Men. The reference described the smooth operation of President Richard Nixon's White House staff in responding to allegations of misconduct. Other references Ogden Nash, in his 1949 poem "Line-Up For Yesterday: An ABC of Baseball Immortals," referred to the trio of players in a stanza for the letter "E": Walt Kelly, in the May 7, 1953 installment of the Pogo comic strip, depicted the character Simple J. Malarkey (a caricature of Senator Joseph McCarthy) advising a preacher that the Constitution "can't guarantee what happens after you speak up... it don't pay to tinker forever with chance, ha ha like the fella says." Musician Scott Miller, leader of the 1980s band Game Theory, chose Tinker to Evers to Chance as the ironic title of a 1990 compilation album of the band's greatest would-be hits which, despite significant critical acclaim, had struck out commercially. Like Nash, Miller emphasized the double meaning of the names, creating a visual pun by featuring a piece from a Tinkertoy set ("tinker"), a pocket watch ("evers"), and a die ("chance") on the album cover. The poem was set to music and recorded in 2010 by Chicago singer/songwriter guitarist Chris McCaughan. The song, also titled "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," appears on the album We Chase the Waves by McCaughan's solo project, Sundowner. See also "Casey at the Bat" Notes References External links 1910 poems American poems Baseball poems Chicago Cubs Works originally published in American newspapers