The Sad Lexicon

In this episode, we’re traveling back to the early 1900s, where baseball rivalries ran hot, double plays stung, and a poet named Franklin Pierce Adams captured it all in a few simple lines. Baseball’s Sad Lexicon may be short, but this poem has become part of baseball’s soul, memorializing the heartbreak that Giants fans felt every time the legendary trio—Tinker, Evers, and Chance—turned a would-be rally into yet another double play.

Join us as we dive into the life of Adams, a newspaperman with a knack for humor and heartbreak, and explore how this poem became a rallying cry for frustrated fans and a piece of baseball’s eternal lore. We’ll talk about the poem’s meaning, its reception in Adams’ time, and its lasting legacy in the world of sports. Whether you’re a baseball fanatic or just love a good story, this episode brings a piece of baseball history to life with a touch of wit, nostalgia, and plenty of “Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

Welcome back to this episode, where we take a step back to a time when baseball—and poetry—could share a moment of melancholy and magic. Today, we’re diving into a short but mighty piece of baseball lore: Baseball’s Sad Lexicon. You know it, even if you don’t know you know it. It’s got all the drama of a ninth-inning rally, except here, the rally ends with one particular trio shutting things down: “Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

But before we get to the double-play machines, let’s talk about the man behind the words—Franklin Pierce Adams. Born on November 15, 1881, Adams wasn’t a ballplayer. He didn’t wear a cap or work the infield. He was a newspaper man, and not just any newspaper man—Adams was a poet-columnist, a writer with a knack for capturing life’s little miseries with humor and wit. He was the guy you’d read in the Chicago Tribune or the New York Evening Mail if you wanted a laugh—or if you just wanted someone to say, “Yep, life’s tough; here’s a clever way to deal with it.”

Now, Adams had his regular gig, The Conning Tower, a column where he wrote about pretty much everything: sports, politics, New York’s constant hum. He was the guy who made words work, who looked at a baseball game and saw poetry. And sure, Adams had a lot of notable lines in his time. But one verse, one little set of lines about his beloved New York Giants, would end up being the piece he’s remembered for—a piece that would echo through the halls of baseball lore for over a century.

That piece is Baseball’s Sad Lexicon. Written in 1910, it’s short, only a handful of lines. It’s not complicated. It’s not Shakespeare. But it doesn’t have to be. Because in those few lines, Adams captured the agony of a Giants fan watching, helplessly, as the rival Chicago Cubs’ ironclad infield trio—Tinker, Evers, and Chance—shut down every would-be rally, every desperate dash for a hit.

Now, let’s set the scene. It’s the early 1900s, and baseball is still becoming what we know today. The Cubs, yes, the Cubs, were then the team to beat. And the Giants, led by the fiery John McGraw, were in the mix year after year. Every time these teams met, the Giants faithful hoped for a different outcome. But hope doesn’t stop a double play, and the Cubs had perfected it. Enter Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance—an infield so notorious, so quick on the pivot, that they became the stuff of nightmares for Giants fans.

Baseball’s Sad Lexicon reads like this:

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.’

What’s he saying here? “These are the saddest of possible words.” For Giants fans, that was true. It was heartbreak wrapped in a double play. And Adams nailed it. That helpless, sinking feeling as the Cubs’ infield worked its magic. Giants fans could almost see it coming, knew it was coming, and still, it stung every time.

The public loved it, too. It wasn’t just a poem—it was a rallying cry, a lament, and a bit of comic relief all wrapped up in a verse. Fans recited it at the ballpark; newspapers printed it coast to coast. It was catchy, it was clever, and it captured the spirit of the game: the thrill, the frustration, the inevitability of defeat.

Now, Adams may not have had a grand philosophical mission with Baseball’s Sad Lexicon. He wasn’t trying to change the world. But he was doing something special—he was giving a voice to fans’ frustration, putting words to that collective sigh as the Giants got turned away again by those same three names. It was relatable, it was funny, and it was a little bit sad, just like baseball can be on a rainy afternoon when you’re down by four in the ninth.

Over time, Adams’ little poem outgrew its original context. “Tinker to Evers to Chance” became a phrase that baseball fans of all stripes knew, even if they couldn’t tell you exactly why. It became shorthand for precision, for unbeatable defense, for a kind of teamwork that feels, well, almost inevitable.

Today, “Tinker to Evers to Chance” lives on. Not because we’ve got a statistical reason to remember it, or because it shows up on highlight reels, but because it’s part of the fabric of baseball. It’s a piece of the game’s soul. When you hear it, you think of all the times a good rally ended in heartbreak. It’s why we love baseball—because for every victory, there’s a defeat, and for every great hitter, there’s a double-play combo ready to dash his hopes.

So here’s to Franklin Pierce Adams and Baseball’s Sad Lexicon—to those “saddest of possible words” that still capture the agony and ecstasy of the game. It’s not about stats; it’s not about records. It’s about baseball, pure and simple.