Not-So-Basic Nightmare Baseball [7] Quiz

Answer: Bill Terry

Terry took the reins of the Giants in 1932 and his efforts led the New York club to a 91-61 record and the World Series against the Washington Senators, four games to one. At the time, Terry was still playing for the team, acting as first baseman for five seasons before taking on the management role full-time. Terry would be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1954 and would be proceeded in as manager by Mel Ott, who he shared the World Series championship with.

Answer: Rogers Hornsby

Though Ty Cobb is one of the most celebrated batters of the Major Leagues, Hornsby would overtake records throughout a six-year-long consecutive run in the 1920s, being the top National Leaguer with his career stats. He also banged out 301 home runs in his 23 seasons across five different teams. Hornsby helped the St. Louis Cardinals take the World Series in 1926 and he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1942.

Answer: Thirteen

Winner of the World Series three times in the 1910s, each time with the Philadelphia Athletics, Jack Coombs was a domineering pitcher and ended his fifteen-season career with a high win rate. 1910 was likely his strongest year during which he was 31-9 with thirty-five complete games in the season. He led the team to a 102-48 first-place finish and the World Series championship.

Jack's 13 shutouts was a record for the American League, but in the National League George Bradley had 16 in 1876 and Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander also took 16 in 1916.

Answer: Johnny Blanchard

Blanchard took up for injured teammate Elston Howard and played in 93 games in the 1961 season. It was the most games that he played in a season in his career and made the best of it with 21 home runs. Blanchard would stay with the Yankees until 1965 before trading off to Kansas City and Milwaukee in the same year and leaving the sport. Two of those years with the Yankees, however, he took the World Series (including that 1961 year).

Answer: False

This would have been true for more than a century of MLB stats but Mark McGwire accomplished this feat starting with a run in 1996. McGwire hit 52 in 1996 with Oakland; he hit 58 with Oakland and St. Louis in 1997; he then hit 70 in 1998 and 65 in 1999 for St. Louis.

Sammy Sosa was the second player in history to do it, starting his run in 1998 and finishing it out in 2001.

Answer: Los Angeles Dodgers

Karros accomplished this from 1995 to 1997. In his 13 seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, from 1991 to 2002, he hit 270 home runs. He would spend another season with Chicago and another with Oakland before retiring from the sport, transitioning into sportscasting shortly after.

Originally, the Dodgers made their home in Brooklyn, moving to L.A. in 1958; Karros, at the time, had the record for most home runs by a Dodgers player since the team's move.

Answer: Chicago White Sox

Cuban-American outfielder Jose Canseco is amongst the most famous players of the sport from the turn of the century not only for his record on the field, but for what would become a massive scandal involving anabolic steroids in 2005. Nonetheless, his record in the 1990s was significant as he hit these home run totals with Athletics, Rangers, Blue Jays, and Devil Rays (in that order). Fred McGriff also accomplished this feat, ending his run with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, as well, in 2004.

Answer: Houston Astrodome

The Mick did it in an exhibition game which posted the Houston Astros against the New York Yankees in 1962. Mantle was, of course, a career-long Yankee, playing for New York from 1951 to 1968.

The Houston Astrodome opened in 1965 as the Harris County Domed Stadium and became the go-to destination for MLB, NFL, and NBA games in Houston. Notably, the venue became the first place at which AstroTurf was used (hence the name). It would remain the home field for the Astros until 1999 when they would make the move to Minute Maid Park. The Astrodome would remain in use in some capacity until 2014 when it was declared unusable as a sports venue, instead being placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Answer: Pitch

Hit by Pitch is an instance in which the person at-bat is hit by the pitched ball, either directly or on a piece of their clothing, and in these instances the batter is awarded a walk to first base. Generally, proof needs to be shown that the batter was not intentionally hit.

Jason Kendall, then of the Pittsburgh Pirates, was hit 31 times in both 1997 and 1998. He played with the Pirates from 1996 to 2004, retiring from the game after fifteen seasons in 2010.

Answer: Nate Colbert

Stan Musial accomplished this himself back in 1954 when, on May 2, he managed five home runs in the earlier game and two more in the evening against the New York Giants. Nate Colbert would blast out five home runs in his own double-header miracle as a team member for the San Diego Padres on August 1, 1972 against the Cincinnati Reds. Colbert would go on to have a team record for home runs well into the twenty-first century, maintaining that total (of 163 in six seasons) until his death in early 2023.