Tinker-Evers-Chance

[FrankWakefield]

Yoda, Please consider this a tweak of Mark's response about gonfalon...

Franklin Pierce Adams wrote that... read about him in Wiki. He was super literate, as were the others in the Algonquin Round table (read about that, in Wiki, too).

So, at the time, the New York Times crossword puzzle had not used the word GONFALON in the clues for a word, nor as a word for a puzzle. It was THAT to which he was referring, bursting THAT bubble. These folks were all about the words... hence the way that poem is written.

While fine tuning my answer to that, I came across the 15 letter aspect of the 3 players, and I don't recall ever encountering that before...

The last name, plus the position... when the letters for that are added the total for each is 15.

Tinker 6 short 5 stop 4 6+5+4=15
Evers 5 second 6 base 4 5+6+4=15
Chance 6 first 5 base 4 6+5+4=15

What does that mean?

1- the 15 letter thing is a huge coincidence.

2- these Roundtable guys (and a few gals) were really digging into every sentence, word, letter count, and definition that might be associated in some way that they've overlooked.