Solution: Play combo of old - NYT Crossword

“Play combo of old.” How ever to interpret this? Two one-acts that were traditionally staged together? An imperative to spin some 78s featuring an old jazz ensemble? Perhaps a game children played once upon a time with hoops and sticks? Or not. This answer, solved on the crosses with a couple of lucky guesses was TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE. Not because he is male but because much of his career has been devoted to sports journalism, my husband, Craig, knew this one. “It was the Cubs,” he said (though there is some debate about whether the team had formally adopted the name yet). So down the baseball rabbit hole I went to learn that the combo, in keeping with our theme, was synonymous with smoothly executed double plays and that the exploits of these teammates had been immortalized by Franklin Pierce Adams, a Giants fan, in the poem “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” more than a century ago.