Joe Tinker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Tinker

Joseph Bert Tinker (July 27, 1880 – July 27, 1948) was a Major League Baseball player and manager. He is best known for his years with the Chicago Cubs dynasty which won four pennants between 1906 and 1910; and for his feud with double play partner Johnny Evers. Tinker was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.

Early life

Tinker was born in Muscotah, Kansas. He started his professional baseball career in 1900, at the age of 19. In 1901, he batted .290 in the Pacific Northwest League and was purchased by the Cubs.

Major league career

Tinker was the starting shortstop for the Chicago Cubs from 1902 to 1912. He was a speedy runner, stealing an average of 28 bases a season and even stealing home twice in one game on July 28, 1910. He also excelled at fielding, often leading the National League in a number of statistical categories (including four times in fielding percentage). During his decade with the Cubs, they went to the World Series four times, winning in 1907 and 1908.

Despite being just an average hitter, Tinker had a good amount of success against fellow Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson. He hit a game-winning double off of Mathewson in the 1908 National League playoff game - a replay of the Merkle game - that clinched the pennant for Chicago.

Tinker is perhaps best known for the "Tinker to Evers to Chance" double play combination in the poem "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," written by the New York Evening Mail newspaper columnist Franklin Pierce Adams in July 1910. Yet several years earlier, on September 14, 1905, Tinker and Evers had engaged in a fistfight on the field because Evers had taken a cab and left his teammates behind in the hotel lobby. Tinker and Evers did not speak to one another again for 33 years, until they were asked to participate in the radio broadcast of the 1938 World Series (Cubs versus Yankees), where they were tearfully reunited.

Tinker's incessant salary demands got him traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 1912. After a year playing and managing the Reds, Tinker jumped to the Federal League. He managed the Chicago Whales for two years and won the pennant in 1915, but the league folded after the season. He rejoined the Cubs briefly in 1916.

Later life

Tinker ended his career in Florida, managing, scouting, and dabbling in real estate. He ran the Orlando Gulls in the Florida State League. Tinker Field, a stadium in the shadow of the Citrus Bowl, is named for him.

Tinker died in Orlando, Florida on his 68th birthday of complications from diabetes. He was buried in Orlando's Greenwood Cemetery.