Imagine if someone had written a well-known novel about your family and left you out. Imagine being a member of a famous band that wrote a hit song about itself and the song never mentioned you, the drummer.
Well, that’s kind of what happened to baseball player Harry Steinfeldt, who was born 150 years ago, played for the Cincinnati Reds before he was traded to the Chicago Cubs 120 years ago and died in Bellevue in 1914.
And the slight wasn’t small. Steinfeldt was left out of one of the most famous pieces of baseball writing ever published: “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” the eight-line poem by Franklin Pierce Adams that turned the Cubs’ double‑play trio — Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance — into American folklore.
First printed in the New York Evening Mail on July 12, 1910, under the title “That Double Play Again,” the poem was written from the perspective of a frustrated New York Giants fan watching the Cubs turn yet another 6‑4‑3 double play. It was short, rueful and instantly unforgettable.
It also became a national sensation. Sportswriters across the country wrote their own versions. Fans memorized it. Kids recited it on sandlots. And over the decades, the poem did more than celebrate a defensive play, it cemented reputations.
Many historians credit the poem with helping Tinker, Evers and Chance reach the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. The phrase “Tinker to Evers to Chance” became shorthand for teamwork, precision and ruthless efficiency.
But the poem had a blind spot. It omitted the fourth man, Harry Steinfeldt, the Cubs’ starting third baseman from 1906 to 1910. And the reason was painfully simple: his name didn’t easily rhyme. Adams captured the trio’s rhythm in lines every serious baseball fan still recognizes:
“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.
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
“Tinker to Evers to Chance” sang. “Steinfeldt to Tinker or Evers to Chance” did not. Steinfeldt’s name — long, German, and rhythmically clunky, simply didn’t fit the tight, musical meter Adams needed. That poetic omission shaped the way baseball remembered Steinfeldt or forgot him.
Cincinnati ballplayer, northern Kentucky life
The bridge from that slight to the rest of Steinfeldt’s life runs straight through Cincinnati and northern Kentucky. And the truth is this: maybe none of it — the championships, the poem, the fame he didn’t get, the quiet life he built in Bellevue — happens without one moment on October 24, 1905.
That’s when the Reds traded Steinfeldt and outfielder Jimmy Sebring to the Cubs for pitcher Jake Weimer. This single transaction reshaped the Cubs, redirected Steinfeldt’s life, and ultimately tied his legacy to the banks of the Ohio River.
Before that trade, the St. Louis-born Steinfeldt was already a familiar figure in Cincinnati. The Reds had purchased him from Detroit in 1897, and by 1898 he was the club’s all-purpose handyman, a utility infielder who could play anywhere, hit respectably, and tell a story better than most newspapermen. He hit a league-leading 32 doubles with 12 triples in 1903 while batting .312.
He wore whalebone shin guards before anyone else dared to, invested in real estate in El Paso and Fort Worth, and once claimed he escaped a Texas ballpark under gunfire after turning a triple play that ruined a group of gamblers’ bets. Whether the tale was true or just Lone Star mythmaking, it fit the man: steady, tough, and unflappable.
By the early 1900s, Cincinnati had become home. Steinfeldt married a local woman, Myrtle Lockwood of Bellevue, in a whirlwind Covington ceremony he later admitted he was too drunk to remember.
The Lockwood family ran a successful cooking‑utensils business, and Steinfeldt would eventually work in their bread‑pan factory between baseball seasons. He moved to Bellevue, crossed the river into Cincinnati for games, and became part of the region’s fabric long before he became part of Chicago’s history.
He was a regular presence on the streetcars that rattled across the suspension bridge, and local kids would gather outside his home hoping to glimpse the big‑league third baseman. On game days, beginning in 1902, he would have traveled to the old Palace of the Fans, the ornate, short‑lived predecessor to Crosley Field, where Reds crowds once watched him play.
But by 1905, Steinfeldt’s relationship with the Reds had soured. Injuries slowed him, his batting dipped, and he bristled at trade rumors. When told Boston might want him, he snapped, “Well, I wish they would trade me; nothing would suit me better.” Four days later, Cincinnati obliged, sending him to Chicago in a deal that barely made headlines.
It should have. That trade completed one of the greatest infields baseball has ever seen and set history in motion.
Steinfeldt to Chicago to Bellevue
Chicago sportswriters weren’t impressed with Steinfeldt at first. One columnist joked that the Cubs should install a billiard cushion in right field to bounce back Steinfeldt’s errant throws.
But once the games began, the jokes stopped. In 1906, his first season in Chicago, Steinfeldt led the National League in hits (176) and RBIs (83), batted .327, and anchored a team that won 116 games, still the NL record. He led all third basemen in fielding percentage and became the final piece of the infield that would dominate baseball for half a decade.
On the very day “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon” first appeared, the only double play the Cubs turned went Steinfeldt‑to‑Evers‑to‑Chance. If Adams had waited and Steinfeldt’s name was more flexible, maybe baseball’s most famous verse might read differently.
Still, Steinfeldt didn’t need a poem to prove his worth. He hit .471 in the 1907 World Series, helping the Cubs sweep Detroit. He played more than 150 games a year from 1906–1909. Steinfeldt was selected three times to Spalding’s All‑America team. And he was, by many accounts, the best defensive third baseman of his era, on a par with Tinker, Evers and Chance.
Yet while the Cubs soared, Steinfeldt’s health faltered. For all the stability he found at home, his body began to betray him. By 1911 he was back in Bellevue, suffering what newspapers called “nervous prostration.”
He tried comebacks with St. Paul, Boston, Louisville, Chattanooga, and even Covington of the Federal League, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He died in Bellevue three years later, at just 38. Cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. He was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, in the Lockwood family plot.
Today, Steinfeldt is the answer to a trivia question. But in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky, he is more than that. He was a Reds infielder who became a Cubs champion. A storyteller who settled in Bellevue. A man whose greatest triumphs and greatest heartbreaks hinged on a trade made 120 years ago.
Without that deal, where the Cubs acquired a missing piece, there may be no Cubs dynasty. No 1907 or 1908 World Series titles. Maybe even no “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon” at all. But there was a quiet Bellevue home where Steinfeldt tried to rebuild his life. In Cincinnati, there’s a headstone marking the resting place of the forgotten fourth man.
Tinker, Evers and Chance may be the players in the poem. But Cincinnati and northern Kentucky know the truth. It was always Tinker to Evers to Chance — with Steinfeldt. The missing man? He’s ours.