"Line-Up for Yesterday: An ABC of Baseball Immortals" is a poem written by Ogden Nash for the January 1949 issue of SPORT Magazine. In the poem, Nash dedicates each letter of the alphabet to a legendary Major League Baseball player. The poem pays tribute to 24 players altogether, plus one winking reference to himself (under "I") as a fan of the game, and concludes with a final stanza in homage to the players collectively.

Baseball players referred to in the poem

edit

Statistics

edit
  • Eighteen of the players were also in the Hall of Fame at the time, and all but one (Bobo Newsom) would eventually be inducted.
  • Eight players—Cobb, Gehrig, Hornsby, Johnson, Mathewson, Ruth, Wagner, and Young—would be elected to the All Century Team in 1999.
edit