While I’m not much of a sports fan these days, I did play a lot of sports over the years. I loved playing sports but watching them now is as much fun as watching paint dry. I’m still a lover of trivia too so it’s about time I matched them up. Here are a few sports trivia facts you may not have been aware of.

• Wilt Chamberlain averaged 48.5 minutes per game in 1961–62. That means he played every minute of every game and every minute of every overtime.

• Pittsburgh is the only city where every one of its professional sports teams wears the same colors.

• Major league baseball uses approximately 900,000 balls every season.

• Prior to the 1930s in the NBA a jump ball used to follow every made basket.

• One of the greatest pitchers in MLB history was known to run off the field during games to chase firetrucks. Rube Waddell was fascinated with firetrucks and managers had a difficult time keeping him on the mound if one drove by. It didn’t stop him from being one of the greatest strikeout pitchers in the history of the game.

• Wilt Chamberlain once averaged over 50 points per game for an entire season.

• Before Babe Ruth, MLB’s career home run record was just 138. When the babe retired, the new record was 714.

• Jackie Mitchell, one of the first (and only) female player in the major league baseball system, once struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in consecutive at-bats. The strikeouts occurred during a minor league exhibition game against the Yankees.

• For 43 years, the NFL record for the longest made field goal was held by a man (Tom Dempsey) with no toes on his kicking foot.

• Jackie Robinson was not the first black player in major league baseball. William Edward White, a former slave, served as a one-game replacement player in 1879. Moses Fleetwood Walker lasted slightly longer, playing nearly a full season in 1884, 63 years before Jackie Robinson made his historic debut.

PLAY BALL ! !