If you’re like me, you love baseball trivia. It’s a chance to show off your knack for recalling mostly useless facts about players who probably don’t play anymore. It’s a way to reminisce about the days of yore, when baseball was played with rocks and baserock was played with knives.
K, sorry. Anyways, if you’re like me you probably also hate baseball trivia, because with all the details and stats that are recorded, there’s an opportunity for endless amounts of pointless and unfun baseball trivia. To steal a line from the man to whom I’m about to link, unless your Floyd Robinson’s mother, you don’t care who led the American League in doubles in 1962. You either know it or you don’t, and no amount of thought is going to help you.
That’s where Rich Burk’s baseball trivia (and baseball-reference) comes in. Rich feels your pain, and has done something about it. You can read about all the gruesome details over on his site, but be careful! This isn’t any ordinary baseball trivia site. It’s slightly old school, in that there are no interactive answer fields or names that get automatically revealed when you type them. Each question is accompanied by 3 hints that are listed directly below it, and at the very bottom of the page are all the answers. This makes things tricky, especially if you choose to skip a question or come back to it later.
The first thing I’d recommend is reading the “About Rich Burk’s Baseball Trivia” followed by the “Ground Rules“. Those will tell you what it’s all about and how to play.
If you don’t feel like jumping right in, I’ll give you a question here to get you started.
The Victors
A couple of days ago, we were discussing the years 2000-2011. During those 12 seasons combined, which major league pitchers have the most wins? Name the top ten in any order.
Step 1 is writing down your best guess. Don’t be afraid to spend a few minutes (or longer) mulling it over. Even if you’re not too sure, or can hardly name 10 decent pitchers period, it doesn’t hurt to guess.
After your done you can check out Hint 1. Use the information provided to change your answers how you see fit. Make sure you have a way of knowing when each player is guessed. Correct guesses made without any hints receive the most points, which each hint reducing the points awarded by 1.
Here is Hint 2 (remember to change your answers accordingly)… Hint 3… and finally, the Answers. Again, I recommend giving it some thought between each hint.
Now you add up your score: 4 points for answers without any hints, 3 points after the first hint, 2 after the second, and 1 point after the third. Any blanks or incorrect answers don’t affect your score.
How fun was that? Did you beat me? I got 28 points… 5 players with no hints, 3 players after 2 hints, and 2 players after 3 hints (sadly, I had one of my 3-hint players listed after 1 hint, but took him off after the hint 2).
And finally, two thoughts: (1) Don’t cheat, and (2) If you write an answer down that ends up being correct, but then you remove it after one of the hints, and then you write it again after a later hint, you don’t get points for the first time you wrote it. It has to be on there every subsequent round in order to get the higher point total. Make sense?