"Stick a fork in him--he's done" (March 1953)

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"STICK A FORK IN HIM--HE'S DONE" (continued)

   The old ADS-L archives should have my 1950s citation of this phrase (posted 1998?), but I think it's been destroyed.  Perhaps Fred Shapiro or Gerald Cohen has it on file.  Anyway, I think this one is earlier.
   From Red Smith's Views of Sport, NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 3 March 1953, pg. 27, col. 2:

   _They Stuck a Fork in Bobo_
(...)
   It was the adequate torso of Mr. Bobo Newsom, a professional pitcher, aged forty-five going on forty-six, who has been one of the scenic glories of organized baseball since the Battle of San Juan Hill.  Mr. Newsom looked superlatively fit.  He confessed that he had trained faithfully all winter serving as a tourist attraction in Winter Park, Fla., flapping flapjacks in the window of a short-order house.
   "Do you mean to say," Mr. (Athletics coach James J.--ed.) Dykes was asked incredulously, "that he is one of your pitchers?  Pardon my ignorance, but not even Rand-McNally could trace him around."
   "You should see him throw," the manager said.  "He worked two games for us against the Senators last year after we got him from Washington.  He won one, when I had to take him out in the ninth.  In the other, he ran from first to third in the eighth inning and he was winded.  He lost his control and I said, 'Stick a fork in him, he's done.'  So I relieved him and we finally lost in the eleventh."

(Maybe the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library can get me the date of Bobo's second game, where this was said?--ed.)

(Re "Grandfather"--Probably John Crosby was talking about someone who's out of it and doesn't know the slang--ed.)