Who's on First?

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Who's on First? is a comedy routine made famous by Abbott and Costello. The premise of the routine is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team to Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions. In this context, the first baseman is named "Who"; thus, the utterance "Who's on first?" is ambiguous between the question ("which person is the first baseman?") and the answer ("Mr. Who is the name of the first baseman.")

1 History
2 The Sketch
3 Cultural references
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

"Who's On First?" is descended from turn-of-the-century burlesque sketches like "The Baker Scene" (the shop is located on Watt Street) and "Who Died" (the owner is named Who). By the early 1930s, a "Baseball Routine" had become a standard bit for burlesque comics across the United States of America.

Shortly after Abbott and Costello teamed up, they honed the sketch, using the nicknames of then-contemporary baseball players like Dizzy and Daffy Dean (and their alleged French cousin, "Goofé") to set up the premise. In 1938 burlesque producer John Grant, working with Abbott and Costello, asked Will Glickman, a staff writer on The Kate Smith Hour radio show, to sharpen and amplify the Baseball Routine for performance on the show. This version, with extensive word play based on the names of contemporary baseball players became known as "Who's On First". By 1944, Abbott and Costello had the routine copyrighted.

It was said that Abbott and Costello performed "Who's On First?" a thousand times in their careers, and rarely was it performed the same way twice. Once, they did the routine at President Roosevelt's request. It was featured in the team's 1940 film debut, One Night in the Tropics. The duo reprised the bit in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties, and it is that version which is considered their finest recorded rendition. They also performed the routine numerous times on radio and television (notably in the Abbott and Costello Show episode "The Actor's Home").

In 1956 a gold record of "Who's On First?" was placed in the Baseball Hall of Fame museum in Cooperstown, New York. A video (taken from "The Naughty Nineties") now plays continuously on screens at the Hall. (Abbott and Costello are not, as some legends have it, members of the Hall of Fame itself [1].)

In the 1970s, Selchow and Righter published a Who's on First? board game.

In 1999, TIME magazine named the routine Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th century.

An early radio recording was placed in the Library of Congress' National Recording Archives in 2003.

In 2005 the line "Who's On First?" was included on the American Film Institute's list of 100 memorable movie quotes.

Canada's first ever all comedy radio channel CFHA located in Saint John, New Brunswick chose this routine as the first sketch aired on their station.

[edit] The Sketch

The names given in the routine for the players at each position are:

First Base: Who
Second Base: What
Third base: I Don't Know
Left field: Why
Center Field: Because
Pitcher: Tomorrow
Catcher: Today
Shortstop: I Don't Give a Darn! (at other times the phrase was stated as "I Don't Care" or "I Don't Give a Damn")

The name of the shortstop is not given until the very end of the routine, and the right fielder is never identified. But an interpretation of the routine could give his name as Naturally. Other possibilities for his name are question words that were not used in the routine, such as Where, How, or When. However, in the board game, the right fielder is called "Nobody."

(In one production of the sketch on their radio show, the premise was that Costello would be joining the New York Yankees to stand in for Joe DiMaggio. Given this, it's possible that the unnamed right fielder is meant to be Costello himself.)

Abbott's explanations leave Costello hopelessly confused and infuriated, until the end of the routine when he finally appears to catch on. "You got a couple of days on your team?" He never quite figures out that the first baseman's name literally is "Who." But after all this he announces, "I don't give a darn!" ("Oh, that's our shortstop.") That is the most commonly heard ending, which varied depending on the perceived sensibilities of the audience. The even-milder 'I Don't Care' was used in the version seen in the film The Naughty Nineties. A recording of the obvious 'I Don't Give a Damn' has also turned up on occasion.

[edit] Cultural references

The theme has been reprised many times. Some notable examples (a complete list is not remotely feasible) include:

Computing "Who's On First" at http://bleedingedge.com.au/blog/archives/2007/03/a_21st_century_whos_on_first_1.html#more
Abbott and Costello continued to specialize in confused wordplay. In their film "Who Done It?" when their characters are trying to sort out watts and volts ("What are volts?" "That's right."), Lou cuts it short with, "Soon you'll be telling me What's on second base!"
Late night television host Johnny Carson gave a memorable rendition showing President Ronald Reagan being briefed by an aide. Puns were made with the names of Chinese leader Hu Yaobang (who?) of Yasser Arafat (yes, sir) and of Interior Secretary James Watt (what?). In 2003, an updated version of the routine circulated on the Internet featuring George W. Bush, replacing Watt with Kofi Annan (coffee?), identifying the aide as Condoleezza Rice (with eggroll?), Yassir Arafat ("Yes, sir." "Yassir?") and replacing Hu Yaobang with Hu Jintao.
The 1960s comedy group The Credibility Gap recorded a variant in which a rock concert promoter (Harry Shearer) attempts to advertise a concert, headlined by The Who, The Guess Who, and Yes in the Los Angeles Times. When the advertising manager David L. Lander asks him why he doesn't simply write the ad copy down, Shearer closes the routine by saying, "If I could write, I wouldn't have had to steal this bit!" Eugene Levy and Tony Rosato performed a variation on this theme on the TV series SCTV, with the rock groups The Band, The Who, and Yes. The final punchline changed to "This is for the birds (Byrds)!" "Oh, they split up years ago!"
In Ellen Raskin's 1979 novel, The Westing Game, one of the tenants decides to rename a restaurant to "Hoo's on First" with "Hoo" referring to the last name of the owner, however, the restaurant is on the fifth floor and Hoo declines at first because of a rival coffee shop on the first floor. By the end, there are ten restaurants, named Hoo's on second, Hoo's on third, et al.
In the 1984 movie Purple Rain, the characters Morris and Jerome play on the theme in their "the password is what?" exchange.
The 1988 Oscar-winning movie Rain Man also heavily references the sketch. The movie's main character, Raymond (played by Dustin Hoffman), who is autistic, uses the comedy routine as a defense mechanism when others become upset with him or something doesn't go his way.
A sketch in an episode of the Canadian TV series The Kids in the Hall features an attempt to stage the act, which is foiled by a straight man (Dave Foley) who is at first inattentive, and then outsmarts the joke by explaining, in tedious detail, why the other comedian was confused. ("No no, Watt is on - oh, I see what your problem is! Look, you're confused by their names, because they all sound like questions.")
An episode of U.S. Acres featured three dog brothers named "Who", "What" and "Where", with predictable confusion.
In The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss episode "Horton Has a Hit!", Mr. Fox and Mr. Knox put on a similar routine regarding the character Cindy Lou Who:

Mr. Knox: Cindy Lou who?

Mr. Fox: That's the girl's name.

Mr. Knox: That's whose name?

Mr. Fox: That's what I've been trying to tell you.

"Do you get it?"
A visual reference to the routine from the series Robot Chicken.

On The Simpsons, in the 1999 episode 'Marge Simpson in: "Screaming Yellow Honkers"', Superintendent Chalmers and Principal Skinner try their hand at being Abbott and Costello, but Skinner botches the routine seconds into the act (with delivery of the line, "Not the pronoun but a player with the unlikely name of Who, is on first."), bringing the act to a quick end.
MAD magazine printed a modernized version of the sketch in which the duo attempt to organize MTV's music video library, which proves to be difficult because Costello takes Abbott's stating the song titles and band names literally.
The routine is referred to in the Veggie Tales episode "Duke and the Great Pie War", released in 2005.
In 2006, the Adult Swim series Robot Chicken made a visual reference to the routine by showing a Doctor Who figure on first base.
In an episode of Animaniacs, Slappy and Skippy Squirrel attend the first Woodstock Festival, where they pay homage to the routine by confusing the names of the bands The Who, The Band, and Yes. [2]