Tinker to Evers to Chance

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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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

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Proper noun

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Tinker to Evers to Chance

  1. A famous baseball infield double-play combination.

Noun

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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

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References

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  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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