Not-So-Basic Nightmare Baseball [5] Quiz

Answer: 60

Babe Ruth had a banner year in 1927 with his astounding sixty home run totals-- the most in the American League that year (that's for all teams!). Seventeen of those were in September 1927 alone, the highest total that he would achieve in a single month of his entire career.

Ruth was, famously, one of the greatest baseball players of all time. His twenty-two-year-long career is one of the most celebrated in the history of the sport. His sixtieth home run ball from 1927 was donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame in April 1964. He played for the Yankees at the time, winning the World Series (his fifth of seven) that year.

Answer: Ken Griffey Jr.

With a twenty-two-year-long career in Major League Baseball, Ken Griffey Jr. was amongst the top names to emerge from the sport in the 1990s. Playing for the Seattle Mariners through the 1990s he would move to the Cincinnati Reds for the bulk of the 2000s.

1994 was a strong year for Ken. It would be the first year he was noted as the American League's home run leader (he would reclaim this title from 1997 to 1999). Every single year in the 1990s he was considered an MLB All-Star. He retired from the game in 2010 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2016.

Answer: Los Angeles Dodgers

Though Jay Howell played for both teams in the 1980s, his 1988 season was his first in L.A.; he would play with the Dodgers for five years-- his longest stint on any of his seven teams in his fifteen-year career in the MLB. A relief pitcher, Jay Howell would end 1988 as a World Series Champion as he and the Dodgers end up beating the Oakland Athletics four games to one.

He retired from the game in 1994.

Answer: Willie Mays

Willie Mays was the last one to do this and, though you may have had a whole century to peruse the stats, he actually achieved this feat in 1955. By the time the calendar flipped over to the twenty-first century, only six players in the MLB had accomplished this feat in its history.

Interestingly, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle both managed to check off this achievement in the same year -- 1955. Mays just did it after him.

Answer: New York Giants

Rhodes became a star in 1954, managing to help his team along to a World Series win against the Cleveland Indians, kicking off their first game with a three-run home run in the Polo Grounds. Rhodes' entire career would be played with the Giants throughout the 1950s. Following the Giants' move to San Francisco in 1958, Rhodes would play one more year with them before ending his MLB career.

He passed away in 2009.

Answer: Five

Ted Williams, a left-fielder for the Boston Red Sox for the entirety of his career, is a player with one of the most significant batting averages of all-time, managing to become one of the best hitters in the sport upon his debut in 1939. Not only was he the last American League player to manage a batting average over .400 in a season (doing so in 1941), but he plugged away at the game with only five sacrifice bunts (out of fifteen across the twenty-one years he played). For comparison, Babe Ruth, another baseball great, bunted 113 times!

Answer: Pittsburgh Pirates

Between 1957 and 1973, Pappas played for four teams-- the Orioles, the Reds, the Cubs, and the Braves -- and he was quite successful with all of them, winning fifteen or more games for all but Atlanta. He never played for the Pirates. He finished his career with a record of 209-174 at the end of 1973, taking with him a no-hitter in 1972, three All-Star titles, and an induction into the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame.

He passed away in 2016.

Answer: Jim Rice

A career-long Red Sox player, Jim Rice was the definition of an MVP, becoming an eight-time All-Star left-fielder and becoming inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009. He would be the leader for home runs and RBI several years over before retiring from the game in 1989. Notably, Rice's 406 total bases in a season, also accomplished in 1978, was a team record and the most ever since Hank Aaron in 1959.

Answer: Harry Davis

Starting in American baseball in 1895 and continuing his career through the sport's early days until 1917, Harry Davis was notable for a number of firsts in the league. Playing for the Philadelphia Athletics for most of that time (on and off), he managed to win four home run titles in a row from 1904 to 1907, leading the American League. Frank Baker would manage the same feat from 1911-1914 on the same team while Babe Ruth would dominate this honour on the Red Sox and Yankees rosters throughout the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s.

On the National League side, such streaks wouldn't be as common. Ralph Kiner, however, would sweep consecutive years in the 1940s and 1950s. The team he played for? The Pittsburgh Pirates. There's something out there in Pennsylvania.

Answer: Lon Knight

It was on April 22, 1876 that Alonzo 'Lon' Knight did this with the Philadelphia Athletics in Philadelphia. Knight is also credited for being the first man in the major leagues to hit for the cycle, accomplishing a single, a double, a triple, and a home run in the same game, doing so in 1883 while also acting as the manager of Philly's team.

He ended his career a couple of years later as part of the Providence Grays (who also folded).