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Joe Tinker

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

It is a popular game in North America, parts of Latin America, the Caribbean and East Asia. The modern game initially developed in the United States from an early bat-and-ball game called rounders, and now it has become the national sport of United States.

Joe Tinker was born on July 27, 1880, in Muscotah, Kansas. Tinker was 21 years old when he broke into the big leagues on April 17, 1902, with the Chicago Cubs. Tinker was immortalized in Franklin P. Adams's verse, Baseball's Sad Lexicon, better-known, although incorrectly so, as Tinker to Evers to Chance. An intelligent, smooth-fielding, mediocre-hitting shortstop, Tinker and second baseman Johnny Evers, first baseman Frank Chance and third baseman Harry Steinfeldt formed one of the better defensive infields of the day.

Tinker had an aggressive, spirited playing attitude, but otherwise was quite an innocuous character. Yet one day in 1905, he argued with Evers over a cab fare, which led to a fistfight on the field. The contentious Evers would not speak to Tinker for decades and gave him an unrepeatable nickname. Unbeknownst to one another, both were invited to help broadcast the 1938 Cubs World Series, 33 years after their falling out. When they saw each other, after a moment's strained silence, they hugged and cried for some time.

Tinker went on to become president and manager of Columbus and bought controlling interest in the Orlando Gulls Florida State League in 1921. He briefly managed in the International League and scouted for the Cubs. During the 1920s, he made and lost a fortune in Florida real estate; a stadium named after him was built on one property and was used by the Reds in spring training for decades. On his 68th birthday, he died from complications of diabetes. Along with Evers and Chance, he was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Committee on Baseball Veterans in 1946.

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