Johnny Evers

Yes, I am talking about that Johnny Evers of "Tinker to Evers to Chance" fame. 

I have always maintained that it is worth subscribing to Sports Illustrated because about a half dozen or so times a year, they will publish a terrific article, usually a long one that is the last story in the issue, that is so good that it is, as I said, worth the price of a subscription.  So it is with this week's issue (Andrew Luck on the cover) with author Tim Layden's story about the Cubs' Hall of Fame second baseman, immortalized in 1910 in newspaperman Franklin P.  Adams' famous bit of baseball doggerel, "Baseball's Sad Lexicon", Johnny Evers (pronounced "EE-vers", by the way, not EV-ers).  

The hook to this story, however, is that fact that Evers was author Laydon's great-uncle, the brother of his maternal grandfather.  Even though "Uncle Johnny" had died 9 years before Layden was born, he, Layden, always dropped the name of his uncle into conversations.  No one could ever top being related to a Hall of Famer who also happened to be the subject of baseball's second most famous poem.  About a year ago, one of his Sports Illustrated colleagues asked Layden if he ever thought about doing a story about Evers.  That started  Layden on a journey that led to this week's SI feature.  As Layden puts it in the article, "it was a journey that reminded me of what every reporter knows: Disturbing the dust of mythology almost always damages the myth."

A great story and a great piece of writing.  If you are a baseball fan, you need to read this.  Hell, this is worth reading even if you are not a baseball fan.