Who's on First?

Who's on First? is a legendary routine by the comedy team of Abbott and Costello. The premise of the routine is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team to Costello, but their names can all easily be heard as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions.

The comedy routine was first featured in the 1940 film, One Night in the Tropics. The duo reprised the bit in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties, and also performed the routine numerous times on radio.

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.")

As a result of the routine, Abbott and Costello are featured in the Baseball Hall of Fame museum in Cooperstown, New York, even though they had no other connection to the sport (although not, as some urban legends have it, members of the Hall of Fame itself) [1] (http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/faq.htm). TIME magazine named the routine Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th century.

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

• Who: first base
• What: second base
• I Don't Know: third base
• Why: left field
• Because: center field
• Tomorrow: pitcher
• Today: catcher
• I Don't Give a Darn (I Don't Care in the version of the routine seen in The Naughty Nineties): shortstop

The name of the shortstop is not given until the very end of the routine, and the right fielder is never identified.

Cultural references

The theme has been reprised many times. In particular:

• 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 (who?) of Yasser Arafat (yes, sir) and of Interior Secretary James Watt (what?).
• In the animated series Animaniacs, a music variant was performed with Slappy and Skippy Squirrel have a similiarily confusing conversation at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 about the rock bands, The Who, The Band, and Yes.
• The Oscar-winning movie Rain Man also heavily references the sketch. The movie's main character, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), uses the comedy routine as a defense mechanism when others become upset with him or something doesn't go his way.
• On "The Simpsons," in the 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, putting the act to a quick end.
• There is a very famous sketch in an episode of The Kids in the Hall in which an attempt to stage the act is foiled by a straightman (Dave Foley) who is at first inattentive, and then outsmarts the joke by explaining, in tedious detail, why the other comedian was confused.

In 2000 the new restaurant, Momo's, across from then Pac Bell Park in San Francisco, featured in several billboard ads the phrase "What's On Second [Street]?"

CanWest Global Park, a baseball stadium in Winnipeg, Manitoba, features a Chinese restaurant down the first-base line called "Hu's on First."

British comedy double act Vic and Bob, have also adapted the concept into their quiz show Shooting Stars which involved variants of the skit, including Mortimer asking the questions, "A dog has puppies, but what was the name of the mother" and "What (i.e. Watt) is the unit of electrical power?" which naturally serves as its own answer. Reeves takes on Costello's role in utterly missing the point of the trick question.

It is popular in student oral interpretation.

External links

• "Who's on First?" by Abbott and Costello - on Baseball Almanac (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor4.shtml) - accessed March 24 2005
• The Kids In The Hall "Bad Straight Man" sketch (http://www.kithfan.org/work/transcripts/one/vaudeville.html)