Who's on First?

Abbott and Costello performed "Who's on First?" hundreds of times in their careers. Although it was rarely performed precisely the same way twice, the routine follows a definite structure.[1] They did the routine for President Franklin Roosevelt several times. An abridged version 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 longer version which is considered their finest recorded rendition.^[a] They also performed "Who's on First?" several 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 National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. A video (taken from The Naughty Nineties) now plays continuously on screens at the Hall.

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

In 1999, Time named the routine Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th Century.^[9]

An early radio recording from October 6, 1938, was placed in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2002.^[10]

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

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

The name of the shortstop is not given until the very end of the routine and the right fielder is never named. In the Selchow and Righter board game, the right fielder's name is "Nobody".^[11]

At one point in the routine, Costello thinks that the first baseman is named "Naturally":

Abbott: You throw the ball to first base.
Costello: Then who gets it?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Now you've got it.
Costello: I throw the ball to Naturally.
Abbott: You don't! You throw it to Who!
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Well, that's it—say it that way.
Costello: That's what I said.
Abbott: You did not.
Costello: I said I throw the ball to Naturally.
Abbott: You don't! You throw it to Who!
Costello: Naturally.

Abbott's explanations leave Costello hopelessly confused and infuriated. At two points in the routine Costello appears to parody Abbott by saying what appears to be gibberish to him, but inadvertently gets it right:

Costello: Now Tomorrow throws the ball and the guy up bunts the ball. Now when he bunts the ball, me being a good catcher, I want to throw the guy out at first base, so I pick up the ball and throw it to who?
Abbott: Now that’s the first thing you’ve said right!
Costello: I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!

And finally,

Costello: Now I throw the ball to first base, whoever it is drops the ball, so the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow—a triple play.
Abbott: Yeah, it could be.
Costello: Another guy gets up and it's a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don't know. He's on third and I don't give a darn!
Abbott: What was that?
Costello: I said, I DON'T GIVE A DARN!
Abbott: Oh, that's our shortstop!

That is the most commonly heard ending. "I Don't Care" and "I Don't Give a Damn" have also turned up on occasion, depending on the perceived sensibilities of the audience. (The performance in the film The Naughty Nineties ends with "I Don't Care".)

The skit was performed only twice on the team's radio series. (It was heard more often when they guested on other shows.) On their April 17, 1947 show, it serves as a climax for a broadcast which begins with Costello receiving a telegram from Joe DiMaggio asking Costello to take over for him due to his injury.^[12] Since DiMaggio played center field at the time, Costello ostensibly would be the center fielder, moving Because to right field.

"Who's On First?" evolved from earlier wordplay sketches but it is not known who transposed the basic wordplay to baseball, although numerous people have claimed or been given credit for it. Such claims typically lack reasonable corroboration. For example, a 1993 obituary of comedy sketch writer Michael J. Musto (1919–1993) states that, shortly after Abbott and Costello teamed up, they paid Musto $15 to write the script.^[13] Several 1996 obituaries of songwriter Irving Gordon (1915–1996) mention that he had written the sketch.^[14][15] Musto would have been 17 when Abbott and Costello teamed in 1936, but a script entitled "The Baseball Rookie," with the names of Costello and Joe Lyons, his straight man before Abbott, dates even earlier, perhaps to 1934, when Musto would have been 15 and Gordon would have been 19.

In 2015, the heirs of Abbott and Costello filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit in the Southern District of New York claiming unauthorized use of over a minute of the comedy routine in the play Hand to God. The suit named producer Kevin McCollum, playwright Robert Askins, and the promoters as defendants. The defense claimed that the underlying "Who's on First?" routine was in the public domain because the original authors, Abbott and Costello, were not the ones who filed a copyright renewal, but the court did not see the need to make a final determination on that. The court ruled against the heirs, saying that the use by the play was transformative.^[16]

On appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court in 2016 but for the other reason. The one minute of the routine used in the play did not constitute transformative fair use, since it was a significant portion and was taken word for word.^[17] But that was moot since the court also found that the heirs had failed to establish that they owned the copyright.^[18] (The court did not reach the issue of whether the routine had entered the public domain since the parties had apparently stipulated that they believed its copyright term was coterminous with One Night in the Tropics, where it had first been published for purposes of copyright law at that time).^[19] The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on the case in 2017.^[20][21]

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The sketch has been reprised, updated, alluded to and parodied many times over the decades in all forms of media. Some examples include:

• The comedy troupe
  proper nouns. The acts were The Who, The Guess Who and Yes.^[22][23]
• Eugene Levy and Tony Rosato performed a variation on this theme on the TV series SCTV (1976–1984), with the rock groups The Band, The Who and Yes. The final punchline changed to "This is for the birds (The Byrds)!" "Ah, they broke up long ago!"^[24]
• Episode six of the fourth season of WKRP in Cincinnati (1981) is entitled "Who's on First?". It revolves around Mr. Carlson being mistaken for Herb Tarlek, and to "prove Andy wrong" Les Nessman is then convinced to act as Mr. Carlson. When a thug named Dave shows up to confront Johnny Fever about an unpaid gambling debt, Johnny claims Andy Travis's identity, while Mr. Carlson refers to Andy as "Johnny" ... with painful consequences for Andy.^[25]
• Author and poet Shel Silverstein's poem "The Meehoo with an Exactlywatt", featured in his 1981 poetry collection A Light in the Attic, is stated in the afterword by Silverstein himself to have been inspired by Abbott and Costello's routine.
• The biography of Lou Costello written by his daughter Chris is titled Lou's on First (1982).^[26]
• In the mid-1980s,
  Yassir Arafat (misheard as "Yes sir").^[27]
• In the 1986 Billy Crystal HBO special "Don't Get Me Started,"
  Sammy Davis Jr practice an ill-fated version of the routine in their own incongruous performance styles. ^[28]
• In the 1988 film Rain Man, the film's titular character, played by Dustin Hoffman, stims by reciting the skit to himself whenever his brother Charlie, played by Tom Cruise, makes him anxious by meddling with his personal effects.^[29]
• In the
  Woodstock Festival, where they pay homage to the routine. Similar to the SCTV version, Slappy confuses The Who, The Band and Yes for proper nouns.^[30][31]
• In the Invasion of the Neptune Men episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1998, during one host segment, Mike and the 'Bots put on a Who's on First-themed skit concerning Japanese Noh Theater.^[32]
• Mad Magazine's February 1999 issue featured an article (written by Desmond Devlin and illustrated by Mort Drucker)^[33] of Abbott and Costello trying to organize MTV's music video library, with Costello getting confused by the names of songs such as "Give Me One Reason", "You Oughta Know", "Ironic", "What You Want", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", "Don't Speak", "If It Makes You Happy", "Stop" and "Quit Playing Games". The names of bands U2 and No Doubt also cause confusion.
• In
  Superintendent Chalmers and Principal Skinner attempt to perform the routine, but Chalmers gives up after Skinner explains the joke with his first line: "Not the pronoun, but rather a player with the unlikely name of "Who" is on first."^[34]
• In
  The PJ's
  episode "The HJs", (2000) Thurgood reopens the apartment building's radio station and forms an unexpected comedy team with the community's beloved crack addict, Smokey. They parody the comedy bit with Smokey saying, "Who's on crack, Say What's on smack, and I Don't Know is on freebase."
• In the Family Guy episode "Extra Large Medium", Peter Griffin, in his psychic routine, attempts to solve a case for the police (namely, a person being buried alive with a bomb attached to him) by "summoning the spirit" of Lou Costello. He and the police officer, Joe Swanson, then reenact the routine when it's revealed the person's name is Melvin Hu. Unfortunately, they do the scene so long that the bomb explodes and kills him, at which time Peter dropped the act and admitted he wasn't a psychic. In the episode, "You Can't Do That on Television, Peter," Peter gets his own sketch cable show, and performs Who's on First with a puma, resulting in Peter getting mauled. Later, the puma visits Peter in the hospital, telling him that he finally understands the joke.
• In 2002, playwright Jim Sherman wrote a variation called "Hu's on First" featuring
  Yassir Arafat ("yes, sir") and Kofi Annan ("coffee").^[35]
  . He also hears Rice introduce herself, particularly using her last name, while talking on the phone and immediately craves rice, wanting to order some to eat.
• In the Get Fuzzy comic for September 12, 2005, an injured Rob asks Satchel to use speed dial to call "Dr Watt", who is second on the speed dial list after Dr. Hu. Satchel gleefully replies "Third Base!", much to Rob's annoyance.^[36]
• In the 2007 film
  Kung Fu studio where he meets Master Yu and an instructor named Mi. Carter, Yu and Mi engage in a comedic back and forth in which they confuse the names Yu and Mi with the words "you" and "me".^[37]
• In 2007, Canadian Internet comedy group LoadingReadyRun released a parody called It's Very Simple.^[38][39]
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, in December 2012, featured a variation of the routine called "Who's on First?: The Sequel". Depicted with vintage touches (black and white images, retro costumes, etc.), the skit finds host Jimmy Fallon in the Bud Abbott role and announcer Steve Higgins as Lou Costello. The twist here is that "Who", "What" and "I Don't Know" actually join in on the quick repartee, with the players respectively played by Billy Crystal, Late Night head writer A. D. Miles and Jerry Seinfeld.^[40]
• In
  Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman. In utter confusion,Todd at one point says "I don't know", to which all the characters simultaneously exclaim "Third base!".^[41]
• The October 19, 2014, strip of the comic Pearls Before Swine sees Rat ask Goat "Whose drummer was Keith Moon?" Goat responds that he is correct, although Rat does not understand that Goat is telling him Moon was the drummer for The Who. It leads to a routine of more confusions, including Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, Steve Howe of Yes and Pete Townshend – also of The Who. Thinking Goat is asking what band Townshend is the guitarist for, an exasperated Rat screams "I don't know!" Goat replies "Third base!" The final panel sees the still-exasperated Rat threatening to hit the comic's author Stephan Pastis with a baseball bat, asking "When would you like this hit?". Pastis responds "Winwood's the guitarist for Traffic."^[42]
• The 2015 puzzle video game
  homophones
  of other words that may appear, an example being the words there, they're and their, thus resulting in a similar confusion to that of the sketch.
• In 2017, Studio C made a spin-off of this as a sketch in their seventh season, titled Detective Doctor, At Your Service,^[44] where several characters have names such as Detective Doctor, Doctor Hisbrother and Officer Wounded, making the scene of an attempted murder much more confusing to deal with.
• Emcee duo Blanche Debris and Jonny Porkpie did an adaptation of the sketch at the 2017 Burlesque Hall of Fame weekender and reunion, recontextualized as the lineup for a burlesque show.^[45]
• In season 11 of All That (2019), the "Good Burger" sketch used the routine, in which Kel Mitchell's character Ed became confused when musical guest H.E.R. walked in to place an order after she told him who she was.
• A variant of unknown origin, called "Abbot and Costello do Hebrew", is popular in the Jewish American community. Its humor draws from the homophonic similarity of a number of words in English – hu, he, me, ma and dag are homophones of the Hebrew words for he, she, who, what and fish respectively.^[46]
• The skit is an
  Bixby. Asking Google Assistant "OK Google, Who's on first?" will lead to the response "Yes, he is." or "Exactly."^[47] Siri responds "Correct. Who is on first."^[48]
  Alexa responds "That's what I keep telling you. Who's on first, What's on second." Bixby responds "I think Who gets the ball and throws it to What."
• There are several American restaurants named "Who's on First", located on 1st Street or 1st Avenue of their respective cities, including
  Snohomish, WA^[51]
• In the spring split of 2022,
  Summoner's Rift
  .