Did Tom Wambsgan’s name mention the end? Frank Rich weighs.

There was a lot to talk about Succession The Internet is about the significance of the name of Tom Wambsgans, the hapless husband of Siobhan Roy, one of the claimants, with her brothers, Kendall and Roman, to the Murdoch-like family throne. in Tik Tok Last week that went viral, Sophie K., editor-in-chief of Nameberry, a baby-name website, pointed out that Tom shared a German title with Bill Wambsganss, who in 1920 converted the first and only unassisted triple play in World Series history.

Kihm posited that Tom’s name was a clue that he, too, would be out three players at once to land at the top of a media empire. Which is what happened in the series finale on Sunday. It’s also worth noting that Tom has done this once before, at the end of the show’s third season, when he told the patriarch Logan Roy that the kids were trying to coup.

Kim wasn’t the first to notice the parallel names – or even to suggest this theory. In November 2021, Wisconsin mathematics professor and Slate contributor Jordan Ellenberg tweeted: Succession Names: (Tom) Wambsgans is named after someone famous for eliminating three opponents at once,” and linked it to Bill’s Wikipedia entry. A month later, the Vanity Fair podcast He’s still watching Male contact, citing the listener’s email. After Nameberry Video, media from The New York Times (“Who was Bill Wambsganss, and was he the ‘Succession’ spoiler?”) worldwide (“How Tom Wambsgans’ last name literally illustrates the shocking end of the succession”) Los Angeles Dodgers Blog (“this Succession Finale theory has described a shocking development in the Dodgers’ history”) as the Wambsgans as having upended the outcome of the show.

According to Colin Wambsgans, a Los Angeles-based composer (and friend of my Slate sports podcast Disconnect and listen cohost Josh Levin), two major branches of the Wambsganses appear to have settled in the United States in the nineteenth century. One of them, in New Orleans, wrote the last name as Tom, with an S at the end, and was Catholic. The other was based in Cleveland and spelled the last name like Bell, with two at the end, and they were Lutheran. “So Bill and the Ampsgans are like a first cousin three times removed,” he said. “Maybe. I might be more associated with Tom Wambsgan.”

Bill Wambsgans was actually born in Cleveland and was the son of a Lutheran clergyman. Wambsganss went to divinity school – reluctantly. He did not want to be a minister, he told Lawrence Ritter in the 1966 book Glory of Their Era: The Story of Baseball’s Early Days Told by the Men Who Played It, partly because he couldn’t speak publicly and stuttered a bit. Wambsganss got lucky. A fellow Divine student who had played professional ball recommended him to the manager of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who was looking for a shortstop. Wambsganss told Ritter, “The good Lord must have had pity on me.”

Wambsganss joined the team in 1913. The following summer, after returning to Cedar Rapids, he was sold for $1,250 to Cleveland’s major team, then known as the Naps, after star sophomore Napoleon Lajoie. After the Wambsganss arrived in Cleveland, sports columnist Ring Lardner wrote a story poem about him:

The Naps bought a short called Wambsganss,

He is set to fill Ray Chapman’s pants.

But when he saw Ray,

and the way he can play,

He muttered, “I don’t have a chance to clam!”

Wambsganss played in the majors from 1914 to 1926, for Cleveland and Boston, and seven more seasons in the minors. His nickname was Twisted-tongue It is often abbreviated on scorecards and newspapers to “Wambi”. Some family members later shortened their names to that.

The 1920 season was a brutal one for Cleveland. Wambsganss’ longtime double player partner, the aforementioned Ray Chapman, was shot and killed in August. “Ray always said he would never play shortstop alongside anyone else,” Wambsganss said. glory of their time. “Unfortunately, that was true.”

But the Cleveland Indians, now called the Indians, played through grief and made it to the World Series, where they faced the Brooklyn Robins. The teams split the first four games of a best-of-nine series. In Game 5, Cleveland was leading 7-0 after four innings, thanks in part to the first grand slam in series history, by Elmer Smith. Second baseman Pete Kilduff and catcher Otto Miller singled to start Brooklyn at #5. The next batter, pitcher Clarence Mitchell, quickly lined up towards the field.

Wambsganss told Ritter that he “made an instinctive running leap of the ball and could barely bounce high enough to catch it with my gloved hands.” Kilduff was running to third and Wambsganss touched second base for second. Then he looked to his left. “Well, Otto Miller, from first base, he was standing there, mouth open, just a few feet away from me,” Wambsganss recalled. “I took a step or two and touched her lightly on his right shoulder, and that was it.”

Fans inside Cleveland’s League Park were confused at first, Wambsganss said, but “by the time I sat on the bench it was pandemonium, straw hats flying across the field, people hoarsely yelling at themselves, my teammates slapping me on the back… The rarest of baseball, as they say. I’m still very proud of it.” Cleveland won the series, five games to two.

So is Waystar Royco executive and Shiv cuckold Tom Wambsgans actually named Cleveland second baseman and World Series trivia question Bill Wambsganss? Did Belle’s three-act play prefigure Tom’s fairy tale a century later?

“I hate to spoil the fun of the Internet, but it’s wrong,” Frank Rich, executive producer for SuccessionHe told me in an e-mail. Tom’s surname was chosen before the first season was filmed Succession The pilot was produced in 2016 — “not to mention plot subtle story turns that culminate 39 episodes later!” Not to mention, many of the show’s main writers, starting with its creator, Jesse [Armstrong]are British, live in London, and are dedicated to British football.”

Rich, writer-at-large for New York Magazine and former New York Times columnist, added that the source of Tom’s last name is typical in screenwriting: A.J Succession An employee has a relative named Wambsgans. Rich said, “If memory serves, we were looking for something off-kilter that would be hard to say/pronounce, befitting a character who arrives as an outsider in the Roys’ world.”

So there is no connection to the history of baseball, Succession fans. Although in the first episode of the series, in 2018, Tom Wambsgans did mark at home A boy is offered a million dollars by Roman Roy for hitting a home run during the Roy family softball game. “Bad luck, boy,” said Tom. make you he wonders.