Not-So-Basic Nightmare Baseball [4] Quiz

Answer: New York

The first-ever game of baseball was played on June 19, 1846 at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey despite the fact that both teams were New York based. The New York Nines ended up beating the Knickerbocker Club, then owned by Alexander Cartwright, by a score of 23-1. Cartwright actually umpired the game and, at one point, levied a six-cent fine on the New York Nines for using profanity against the other team.

The game was played in only four innings.

Answer: Fell over Niagara Falls

Born in 1867, Ed Delahanty was one of a number of Delahanty baseballers and considered to be the likely best of the bunch of them, eventually being elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in the 1940s. In 1903, however, Ed passed away when he was kicked off a train near the International Railway Bridge upriver from Niagara Falls. He ended up going over the edge and passed away.

Ed Delahanty played for several teams in his Major League career including the Philadelphia Quakers, the Cleveland Infants, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Washington Senators. His baseball brothers were Tom, Joe, Frank, and Jim.

Answer: 1940

It was on May 24, 1940 when the home team, the New York Giants, beat the Boston Bees with a score of 8-1. The Polo Grounds were the sixth baseball park to have lights installed and it ended up costing a pretty penny-- then a total cost of $125,000 USD.

There were more than twenty-two thousand fans seated in the stadium on that night. The Polo Grounds were closed and demolished in the 1960s. The New York Giants, who won five World Series Championships, moved to San Francisco in 1957, playing out their games at Candlestick Park until 2000.

Answer: Military service

Gowdy went into the military during World War I, doing so on June 27, 1917. A player for the Boston Braves at the time, he would survive not only his stint in WWI, but WWII as well, being the only Major Leaguer to fight in both wars. He retired in 1948, at the time with two World Series championships to his name, twenty-six years apart, and he passed away in 1966.

In the year following Gowdy's enlistment, in 1918, Eddie Grant was killed in the line of duty, making him the first Major Leaguer to die in any war.

Answer: Boston Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox began life in 1901 as the Americans and in 1902 they were named the Boston Somersets by owner Charles Somers. They were also called the Puritans and Pilgrims. It was owner John Taylor, looking for a zippier name, who renamed them the Red Sox in 1907.

The team started playing their home games in Fenway Park starting in 1912, winning their second World Series in the same year. Before that, and during their time as the Somersets, they played at the Huntington Avenue Grounds.

Answer: Joe Borden

While one might believe this was a feat completed by George Bradley in 1876, you'd be thinking of the first no-hitter logged by the MLB. The first-ever no-hitter in professional baseball history preceded that in 1875 with Joe Borden of the Philadelphias.

He pitched the first recorded no-hitter on July 28th when his team faced off against the Chicago White Stockings. Borden would also end up being the first winning pitcher in a National League game the following year. He was let go from his contract the same year and never returned to Major League play.

Answer: Omar Vizquel

Vizquel overtook both Luis Aparicio and Derek Jeter by the end of his MLB career having played in 2,709 games in the shortstop role. Vizquel, born in Venezuela, had a twenty-four-year-long career in the Major Leagues starting in Seattle in 1989 and proceeding until his final year on the Toronto Blue Jays in 2012. Because of his lengthy career, he was the last player in any North American sporting league to have played in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Though he never won a World Series; he was an All-Star three times over.

Answer: Five

The Pittsburgh Pirates started as a team in 1882 though, then, they were known as the Pittsburgh Alleghenys; they changed their name to the Pirates in 1891. It would be another decade and a half before they would win their first World Series in the Major Leagues. During the twentieth century they'd take the grand prize in 1909, 1925, 1960, 1971, and 1979, going on a dry spell into the twenty-first century.

Answer: Pitcher's box

It was a short-lived rule. When Major League Baseball finally commenced, forty-five feet was switched to fifty feet in an effort to increase hitting for the fans. As the game evolved, the distance between home plate and the pitcher's box landed at sixty-point-five feet. The distance from the back corner of home plate to the back corner of first base, in modern baseball, is ninety feet.

Answer: Jimmie Foxx

Foxx received his first MVP in 1932 with Philadelphia. He also won it the following year in 1933 which made him the first player to win consecutive MVPs. He would win it one more time in 1938, becoming the first player to win it three times. Other players like Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle would join him with this distinction. Stan Musial and Willie Mays, while awarded MVP, did so on the National League side.