Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Tinker to Evers to Chance
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1951
WEBSITE: https://www.davidrapp.co/
CITY: Washington
STATE: DC
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 88120605
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n88120605
HEADING: Rapp, David, 1951-
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040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC |d ICU
046 __ |f 1951-07-27 |2 edtf
100 1_ |a Rapp, David, |d 1951-
370 __ |e Washington (D.C.) |2 naf
374 __ |a Journalists |2 lcsh
375 __ |a Males |2 lcdgt
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a His How the U.S. got into agriculture, c1988: |b CIP t.p. (David Rapp) data sheet (b. 7/27/51)
670 __ |a LinkedIn WWW site, August 31, 2017: |b David Rapp page (David Rapp; journalist and author; based in the Washington, D.C. area; had 30-year career in Washington Journalism, writing and editing for Congressional Quarterly; retired from CQ Roll Call as chie content officer in November 2014; author of book How the U.S. got into agriculture 00 and why it can’t get out; currently working on a book about the Chicago Cubs) |u https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrapp/
953 __ |a bc27
PERSONAL
Born 1951.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Vanderbilt University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Political journalist and book author. Evansville Press, Evansville, IL, reporter; Congressional Quarterly, writer and editor, Congressional Quarterly Roll Call, chief content officer, retired 2014.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
David Rapp has had a thirty-year career in political journalism in Washington, DC. He was writer and editor for Congressional Quarterly covering the U.S. Congress, and was chief content officer of CQ Roll Call who retired in 2014. He began his journalism career writing for his local Evansville Press newspaper in Illinois. Rapp has also written books on U.S. agriculture and on the Chicago Cubs baseball team. His first book, How the U.S. Got into Agriculture: And Why It Can’t Get Out was published in 1988. It describes the politics and economics of farm policy, explains how farm spending got out of control, and discusses various angles of the policy debate on agriculture practices in America.
In 2018, Rapp wrote Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America, about the three biggest names in early twentieth century baseball who contributed to how the sport came to be the game we play today. The Chicago Cubs won two World Series championships between 1906 and 1910. Rapp chronicles the work of the famous infielders who contributed to those wins: shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance. Although the men came from different parts of the country, they worked together to reinvent baseball and lead the Chicago Cubs to victory on the cusp of an industrial American society that brought a cultural awakening with new social, political, and economic ideas. The book’s title comes from the refrain of a short 1910 poem “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon” by Franklin Pierce Adams in a New York newspaper.
Rapp presents the diverse backgrounds of the three men who came from an Irish-American family in New York, the urban center of Kansas City, Missouri, and rural California’s Central Valley. A combination of the three players’ skills at achieving double plays, and manager Frank Selee’s desire to make the Cubs more competitive against East Coast teams and appeal to Chicagoans all contributed to the Cubs’ becoming a powerful symbol. Rapp also explains how baseball became a sport that reflected the urban strength of the turn-of-the-century industrial achievements, one to counter strict Victorian conformity and Calvinist roots. On the New Books Network website, Bob D’Angelo observed: “Rapp humanizes all three men, showing how they survived during a rough-and-tumble era of baseball that was undergoing a transition.” Because “they were from Chicago, which Rapp contends was the epicenter of the baseball world, meant that the game was here to stay,” said Dominic Lynch in America, adding, “their run of success became a blueprint for and a harbinger of the success of the sport.”
A report of how America fell in love with its national pastime, the book “chronicles the metamorphosis of the new twentieth-century nation that embraced baseball as a game that reflected the urban strength,” according to Bryce Christensen in Booklist. The book is not only recommended for baseball fans, but also for enthusiasts of early twentieth-century American history, noted Library Journal critic Brian Sullivan, who added, “Rapp connects these baseball stories to larger cultural themes such as social and economic class.”
“Rapp has written a highly readable history of baseball in its early years, as seen through the lives and careers of three very different men, at times personal enemies on and off the field, but among the very best infielders in the history of the sport,” according to John R. Coyne Jr. online at Washington Times. In addition to all that, Rapp also provides a readable, highly researched social and cultural history of America during the years of the country’s transition to an industrial society, said Coyne.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
America, September 3, 2018, Dominic Lynch, review of Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America.
Booklist, April 15, 2018, Bryce Christensen, review of Tinker to Evers to Chance, p. 13.
Library Journal, April 1, 2018, Brian Sullivan, review of Tinker to Evers to Chance.
ONLINE
New Books Network, https://newbooksnetwork.com/ (March 30, 2018), Bob D’Angelo, review of Tinker to Evers to Chance.
Washington Times, https://www.washingtontimes.com/ (July 18, 2018), John R. Coyne Jr., review of Tinker to Evers to Chance.
I'm a journalist and now author of a book about the 1908 Chicago Cubs: Tinker to Evers to Chance: the Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America. The University of Chicago Press is publisher.
I retired from CQ Roll Call in November 2014 after a 30-year career in Washington journalism. Most of that time was with Congressional Quarterly, the premier authority on Congress. I got my start covering Indiana school sports for my hometown newspaper, the Evansville Press, and attended Vanderbilt University on the Grantland Rice Scholarship for Young Sportswriters.
Now I'm immersed in baseball history and in trying to break 80 in my golf game.
You can reach me by email at david.r.rapp@gmail.com, on Twitter @RappinDC, or on Facebook Messenger. I look forward to hearing from you.
Print Marked Items
Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago
Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America
Bryce Christensen
Booklist.
114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p13+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America.
By David Rapp.
Apr. 2018. 336p. illus. Univ. of Chicago, $27.50 (9780226415048); e-book (9780226415185). 796.357.
Sportswriter Franklin Pierce Adams was merely trying to fill an eight-line hole in a July 1910 newspaper
column when he penned these long-remembered lines celebrating three Chicago Cub infielders
phenomenally adept at turning a double play: "Tinker to Evers to Chance." But Rapp recognizes how this
trio filled a gap--in sports and in American culture--far larger than the one Adams had in view. Readers learn
how the analytically minded Frank Selee brought Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, and Frank Chance together as
part of his ambitious effort to make Chicago's baseball team both more competitive against clubs from New
York and Boston and more appealing to Chicagoans seeking uplifting entertainment. As Rapp delves into
the strikingly different histories of these three acclaimed infielders, he shows just how much they embodied
a maturing nations social diversity. The compelling narrative not only details the feats these three achieved
in helping establish a Cubs dynasty but also chronicles the metamorphosis of the new twentieth-century
nation that embraced baseball as a game that reflected the urban strength developed in modern industry
while also offering greenfield comfort to city dwellers nostalgic for a rural past. A potent reminder of how
America first fell in love with its national pastime. --Bryce Christensen
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Christensen, Bryce. "Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America."
Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 13+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537268012/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0c6f6966.
Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537268012
Rapp, David. Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America. Univ. of Chicago. Apr. 2018. 336p. illus. notes. index. ISBN 9780226415048. $27.50. SPORTS
Most sports fans know that the Chicago Cubs' 2016 World Series championship was that franchise's first since 1908. Significantly fewer know about the 1906–10 Cubs dynasty that captured the previous championships, or its three most famous players: Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance. Here, former Congressional Quarterly editor Rapp seeks to amend this by telling the stories of how three remarkable Hall of Famers contributed to America's enthusiastic embrace of baseball as its national pastime at a time when the game was on the verge of degenerate collapse. The title comes from a throwaway verse in a New York newspaper that eventually came to be known as "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," arguably the second most famous poem ever written about baseball (after "Casey at the Bat"). Significantly, Rapp connects these baseball stories to larger cultural themes such as social and economic class, the New York—Chicago rivalry, and the emerging media technologies during this period. VERDICT Highly recommended for baseball fans and those interested in early 20th-century American history.
Tinker to Evers to Chance The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America. By: Lynch, Dominic, America, 00027049, 9/3/2018, Vol. 219, Issue 5
IDEAS IN REVIEW
David Rapp University of Chicago Press 336p $27.50
Six four three
The 1908 season marked the end of one era and the beginning of another for the Chicago Cubs. That season was the pinnacle of a run of success for the storied franchise, but also the beginning of more than a century of futility (they would not win the World Series again until 2016). But behind that team— and the teams of 1906, 1907 and even 1910—was a trio of infielders immortalized in the popular imagination by an eight-line poem describing their ruthless double-play efficiency.
The poem “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” by Franklin Pierce Adams, begins with the lines “These are the saddest of possible words: Tinker to Evers to Chance.” Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance played shortstop, second base and first base respectively for the Cubs and formed the core of a team that won four pennants and two World Series titles in five years. Their defensive combination was devastating to opposing teams; and combined with the rest of the team’s clutch hitting and ace pitching, they made the Cubs a force to be reckoned with in the first decade of the century.
Rapp uses the three players to examine what baseball was like at the turn of the 20th century, what the sport had evolved from and where it was going. Organized baseball, he says, was first played prior to the Civil War, but the game we know today evolved as a “quasi-professional activity in urban social clubs and recreational leagues.” In part, Rapp contends, baseball was a reaction against the upright (and uptight) ways of the Victorians and their strict Calvinist roots. Baseball was more than a sport: It was a social phenomenon that grew in a way nothing else had done before it.
Rapp delves into brief biographies of Tinker, Evers and Chance to show that baseball was truly a national sport before it became the national pastime. The Cubs were one of the sport’s earliest dynasties, and the fact they were from Chicago, which Rapp contends was the epicenter of the baseball world, meant that the game was here to stay. The infield trio dissolved in 1912, which is where Rapp quite abruptly ends the book. But ultimately their run of success became a blueprint for and a harbinger of the success of the sport.
Dominic Lynch publishes The Monthly Memo, a Chicago-focused general interest website and newsletter.
Baseball's evolution into respectability and America's transition
Print
By John R. Coyne Jr. - - Wednesday, July 18, 2018
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE: THE CHICAGO CUBS AND THE DAWN OF MODERN AMERICA
By David Rapp
The University of Chicago Press, $27.50, 325 pages
(David Rapp tells us that a “gonfalon” is a banner or flag.)
That verse, writes Mr. Rapp, “would soon become the manifesto for an epic American saga,” that saga being baseball’s evolution into respectability and our national pastime. Interestingly, that verse may have also helped propel its author into a bigger writer’s league. As Mr. Rapp points out, “F.P. Adams would one day claim a charter seat at the Algonquin Round Table. a member of the Manhattan literati and celebrity circuit until his death in 1960.”
“The highbrow pundit had had one plebian eccentricity, however: He was a rabid baseball fan — and as a transplant from Chicago, he remained ever faithful to his Cubs.” (And as anyone who ever attends or watches an away game in which the Cubs are playing knows, the numbers of transplanted Chicago Cubs fans across the nation are legion.)
During the first decade of the 20th century, Mr. Rapp writes, notions that had governed much of society during the previous century gave way to new social, political and economic ideas, bringing in their wake what he sees as a cultural awakening. “The-rough-and-tumble city of Chicago became the epicenter of this awakening, the Chicago Cubs baseball club its crowdpleasing exemplar.” And at the center of the teams’ success were shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers and first baseman Frank Chance.
From 1906 through 1910, these Cubs won 530 regular-season games, a major league record that still stands. “The word most often heard to describe the Chicago Cubs‘ dynasty in those days was ‘invincible.’”
Invincible hardly describes the successive Cubs dynasties for the next century, however, which Mr. Rapp briefly laments. However, as a self-described die-hard Cubs fan, he celebrates the 2016 version of the current dynasty that won the 2016 World Series. No longer, he writes, do fans like him have to wait for the moment. “We are no longer a forlorn lot, no longer to be pitied or ridiculed.” (And of this writing, the Cubs have the best record in the National League.)
Mr. Rapp, a respected political journalist and publishing executive with successful stints at Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call who got his start covering sports for his hometown Evansville (Indiana) Press, takes special pleasure in discussing the dawning in Chicago of the golden age of newspapers, sports journalism and its practitioners.
Among his favorites: The Chicago Tribune’s Charles Dryden, whose proteges included Ring Lardner, and some of whose epigrams “were indeed worthy of an Oscar Wilde.” One of Dryden’s best known quips: “Washington, first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.”
Mr. Rapp also has a fine eye for just the right anecdote, as when he links the presidency with the early years of the great growth in popular acceptance and approval of baseball as the national pastime. Attending a game in Chicago, President William Howard Taft, all 300-plus pounds of him, and one of those rare presidents who was genuinely liked, stood up in the middle of the seventh inning to stretch his legs, and the crowd stood with him. Thus was the seventh inning stretch born.
On one level, Mr. Rapp has written a highly readable history of baseball in its early years, as seen through the lives and careers of three very different men, at times personal enemies on and off the field, but among the very best infielders in the history of the sport.
But beyond that, he has given us a highly readable and deeply researched social and cultural history of the United States during the great years of our transition to an industrial society, framed in the rivalry between our two largest cities of the time, and played out by the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants.
• John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author of “Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement” (Wiley).
DAVID RAPP
Tinker to Evers to Chance
The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 2018
March 30, 2018 Bob D'Angelo
Today we are joined by David Rapp, author of the book Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America (University of Chicago Press, 2018). Rapp spent 30 years as a journalist in the Washington. D.C., area and was the former editor of Congressional Quarterly, where he oversaw that publications transition from print to digital publishing. Rapp blows the dust off the legends of the Chicago Cubs’ iconic double play combination of the early 20th century: shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny “The Crab” Evers, and first baseman Frank “The Peerless Leader” Chance. They formed the foundation of a National League juggernaut that won four pennants, two World Series and a major-league record for victories in a season. Rapp humanizes all three men, showing how they survived during a rough-and-tumble era of baseball that was undergoing a transition—just like the United States was at the turn of the century. Each man brought a distinctive local culture with him to Chicago: Tinker was an urbanite from Kansas City; Evers hailed from the heavily Irish-American city of Troy, New York; and Chance traveled east from the laid-back Central Valley of California. All three men were intense—Tinker and Evers had several fights and never spoke to one another off the field—but they proved that teammates with a common goal do not have to like one another.
Review: Three Cubs blaze a trail
Dominic Lynch
August 24, 2018
The 1908 season marked the end of one era and the beginning of another for the Chicago Cubs. That season was the pinnacle of a run of success for the storied franchise, but also the beginning of more than a century of futility (they would not win the World Series again until 2016). But behind that team—and the teams of 1906, 1907 and even 1910—was a trio of infielders immortalized in the popular imagination by an eight-line poem describing their ruthless double-play efficiency.
The poem “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” by Franklin Pierce Adams, begins with the lines “These are the saddest of possible words: Tinker to Evers to Chance.” Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance played shortstop, second base and first base respectively for the Cubs and formed the core of a team that won four pennants and two World Series titles in five years. Their defensive combination was devastating to opposing teams; and combined with the rest of the team’s clutch hitting and ace pitching, they made the Cubs a force to be reckoned with in the first decade of the century.
Rapp uses the three players to examine what baseball was like at the turn of the 20th century, what the sport had evolved from and where it was going. Organized baseball, he says, was first played prior to the Civil War, but the game we know today evolved as a “quasi-professional activity in urban social clubs and recreational leagues.” In part, Rapp contends, baseball was a reaction against the upright (and uptight) ways of the Victorians and their strict Calvinist roots. Baseball was more than a sport: It was a social phenomenon that grew in a way nothing else had done before it.
Rapp delves into brief biographies of Tinker, Evers and Chance to show that baseball was truly a national sport before it became the national pastime. The Cubs were one of the sport’s earliest dynasties, and the fact they were from Chicago, which Rapp contends was the epicenter of the baseball world, meant that the game was here to stay. The infield trio dissolved in 1912, which is where Rapp quite abruptly ends the book. But ultimately their run of success became a blueprint for and a harbinger of the success of the sport.