How ‘Who’s on First?’ Became a Classic Comedy Routine

Before Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” became one of the most famous comedy routines in American history, the duo tested it on family.

One day in 1936, rising comedian Lou Costello asked his cousin, Lou Rege, to swing by his parents’ house in Paterson, New Jersey. Costello and his stage partner, Bud Abbott, were developing a new routine, and Costello wanted Rege’s feedback.

Costello, born in Paterson in March 1906, had been performing in vaudeville and burlesque shows for about eight years and had recently begun teaming with Abbott, who was nine years his senior and had several more years of experience on stage. Abbott, tall, thin and restrained, was the straight man. Costello, shorter, wider and more manic, played for laughs.

The routine they were working on used double entendres and wordplay to play off their dynamic. It revolved around Abbott, who in the skit had recently been appointed manager of a baseball team, giving Costello the rundown of his players, with the wrinkle that they all had absurd and confusing names. The first baseman was called Who, the second baseman’s name was What, and the third baseman, improbably, went by I Don’t Know.

Confusion inevitably ensued, as Costello became increasingly exasperated by Abbott’s explanations:

Costello: You know the guys’ names? Abbott: I’m telling you their names! Costello: Well who’s on first? Abbott: Yeah Costello: Go ahead and tell me Abbott: Who Costello: The guy on first Abbott: Who Costello: The guy playin’ first base Abbott: Who Costello: The guy on first Abbott: Who is on first! Costello: What are you askin’ me for? I’m askin’ you!

And so it continued, with Costello’s apoplexy only increasing alongside his confusion:

Costello: What’s the guy’s name on first? Abbott: No, What’s on second Costello: I’m not askin’ you who’s on second! Abbott: Who’s on first Costello: That’s what I’m askin’ you! Who’s on first? Abbott: Now wait a minute. Don’t…don’t change the players Costello: I’m not changin’ nobody! I asked you a simple question. What’s the guy's name on first base? Abbott: What’s the guy’s name on second base Costello: I’m not askin’ you who’s on second! Abbott: Who’s on first Costello: I don’t know Abbott: He’s on third. Now we’re not talking about him

After running through the routine, Abbott and Costello turned to Rege and asked what he thought.

“Honestly,” he replied, “I don’t think it will fly.”

Fortunately, the two men didn’t heed his advice. The sketch they called “Baseball,” which became universally known as “Who’s on First?,” emerged as the signature routine of their 20-year comedy partnership and one of the best-known comedy routines of all time.

The sketch followed a vaudeville tradition of skits featuring discombobulating wordplay and confusing names. Abbott said it grew out of one called “Who’s the Boss?” But the rapid-fire delivery, Abbott’s imperturbable demeanor and Costello’s increasingly manic frustration combined to make it a breakout hit that surpassed its predecessors and propelled the duo to stardom.

But, like Rege, not everybody took to it immediately. In February 1938, Abbott and Costello were signed as cast members for the popular “Kate Smith Hour” radio program. Despite Costello’s entreaties, Smith’s manager, Tom Collins, resisted his pleas to perform the routine.

As Chris Costello, Lou’s daughter and the author of the memoir Lou’s on First, explains, her father decided to be devious:

“Dad said, ‘Well, guess what, Ted? I’m so sorry. We’re not going to be able to go on tonight because we’ve exhausted every routine we brought with us.’ And Ted said, ‘No, you’ve got to go on tonight. I don’t care what you do. Do that stupid baseball thing.’”

That performance, on March 24, 1938, introduced the routine to a national audience.

“I spoke to the woman who ran the switchboard for the radio station, and she told me it lit up like a Christmas tree,” says Chris Costello.

Among the skit’s fans was none other than Joe DiMaggio, the legendary New York Yankees center fielder who would later marry Marilyn Monroe. DiMaggio’s own major league career was getting underway around the same time Abbott and Costello were gaining popularity.

“I interviewed Dorothy Arnold, who was DiMaggio’s first wife, for my book,” Chris Costello says. “She said, ‘Joe had no sense of humor. None at all. The only time that man laughed was when he would put the record on of Who’s on First, and then he would just be bellowing.’”

The duo’s success on the “Kate Smith Hour” helped propel them to Hollywood, where Universal Pictures cast them in their first film, “One Night in the Tropics” (1940). Although the movie was ostensibly a vehicle for leading man Allan Jones, Abbott and Costello stole the show with a performance that included an abbreviated version of “Who’s on First?”

Over the years, they performed the routine hundreds of times, with no two performances exactly the same. Still, what is widely considered the definitive version appeared in the 1945 film The Naughty Nineties.

On occasion, explains Chris Costello, they would adapt the material for their audience.

“When they went to London the first time to do the London Palladium back in 1950, they realized, ‘Hey, wait a minute, the Brits aren’t gonna know about baseball,’” she recalls. “Dad would say that you could take any sport and it would still work. Well, they didn’t know soccer enough to use the positions in a soccer team, so they used the members of the orchestra at the Palladium instead.”

The success of the sketch launched Abbott and Costello into stardom. Their second movie, Buck Privates (1941), featured the Andrews Sisters and earned $4 million (approximately $91 million in 2026 dollars) at the box office. In total, they made 36 motion pictures between 1940 and 1956, including a series of comedy-horror films in which they encountered Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man and the Mummy. They had their own radio show throughout the 1940s and a TV show from 1952 to 1954.

By the mid-1950s, Abbott and Costello’s star had waned. A combination of overexposure and the rise of new comedy duos, notably Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, shunted them out of the spotlight. They formally split in 1957. Just two years later, Costello, who had battled rheumatic fever since 1943, died of a heart attack at age 52.

Their legacy, however, endures, and their most famous skit is celebrated to this day.

In 1999, Time magazine named “Who’s on First?” the best comedy routine of the 20th century. In 2005, the American Film Institute included the line “Who’s on First?” on its list of the 100 most memorable movie quotations. In 1956, Abbott and Costello donated a gold record of the sketch to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, where a video of the performance from The Naughty Nineties has long played on a continuous loop.

Finally, in 2007, the sketch came true. When Taiwanese infielder Chin-lung Hu reached first base on a single for the Los Angeles Dodgers, legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully declared, “Shades of Abbott and Costello, I can finally say, ‘Hu is on first base.’”