I’m what most of you crazy avid sports fans would call a “fair weather fan”. I confess to that description to a certain degree. Only one sport has ever been all-consuming for me and that is baseball. I spent the better part of my youth playing baseball in Little League, high school teams, American Legion teams, and one local semi-pro team. Playing baseball was my life. Being on the field and playing was heaven for me but it has made watching modern baseball absolute torture. I was never bored while I was playing but watching it now is painful.
Todays blog will return me to those early years of baseball and will test those of you super-fans who have knowledge of the history of the sport. Here are some nicknames of well-known players from the past. Lets see how you do! As always the answers will be listed below.
WHO?
High Pockets
The Iron Horse
Goose
Little Poison
Three Fingered
Gabby
Bucky
Rube
The Trojan
Lippy
⚾⚾⚾
Answers
George Kelly, Lou Gehrig, Leon Goslin, Lloyd James Warner, Mordecai Peter Brown, Charles Leo Hartnett, Stanley Raymond Harris, George Edward Waddell, John Joseph Evers, and Leo Durocher.
Now that the NFL preseason has kicked off, I can once again turn into the fanatical Steeler fan that tends to irritate everyone in Maine or New England. I’m not as rabid as some fans but I am criminally loyal to the Pittsburgh Steelers. I swore when the season started this year I was never going to be a Steeler fan again because of their lousy record in actually playing football in playoff games.
Sorry, but I once again lied. I’ve now decided to include the Tampa Buccaneers as my backup team if the Steelers suck again this year. I’ve always been a Baker Mayfield fan and I would love to see him in the Superbowl if the Steelers don’t or can’t make it.And one additional comment: Tell T.J. Watt to get with the program. Doesn’t he realize by now he’s letting his ego send a wrong message to the fan base (my personal opinion). He sounds a little whiny for the big bruiser that he is. Also, his post seasons are nothing to brag about either.
Today’s post is a trivia quiz on sports for those crazy-ass sports fanatics that are waiting to show me how good they are. We shall see. As always the answers are at the bottom.
Where did the territorial-capture board game Go originate, 4000 years ago?
During a serve in American racquetball, what is the first surface the ball must hit after the racket?
How many unique numbers are used in Sudoku?
When did Ralph Samuelson invent waterskiing?
What is the minimum number of moves needed to achieve checkmate in chess?
Which of these sports is not represented in the Olympics? Basketball, Cricket, Dressage, or Handball
Sam Roth hit the fastest tennis serve ever recorded in 2012. How fast was it?
Who holds the record for most points (100) in a single NBA game?
Who invented the game of Scrabble
When Bingo started sometime around 1929, what was it called?
1896
🏅🏅🏅🏅
Answers
China, The front wall, 9, 1922, 2, Cricket, 163 mi./h, Wilt Chamberlain, Alfred Mosher Butts, Beano.
Games and gamers seen to be all the rage these days and I absolutely love it. I’ve been a computer gamer for more than twenty-five years and have enjoyed every minute of it. I became quite proficient at almost every gaming system I could find. This quiz will address everyone’s knowledge about games, so lets see how we do. The answers are listed below.
Which property represented as a railroad on the Monopoly gameboard was not actually a railroad?
What is the standard width of the bowling alley-gutters not included?
In what game do you find taws, bowlers, reelers, and monnies?
Fred Cox, former Minnesota Viking kicker, holds the patent on what athletic toy?
The popular board game did New Yorker Alfred Butta invent in 1931 and finally send to market in 1948?
What game featured ghosts named Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde?
How many bills does each player gets at the beginning of a game of Monopoly?
How did the French game known as hazards come to be called craps in the United States?
Where were the first outdoor miniature golf courses in the United States built?
In what sport is a battledore used?
ANSWERS
Short Line. It was really a bus company, 41 1/2 inches, Marbles, The Nerf ball, Scrabble, Pac-Man, 27, The game was introduced in New Orleans in 1813 by a Creole man named Johnny Crapaud and it later became known as “Craps”, On rooftops in New York City in 1926, In badminton, it’s the racket used to hit the shuttlecock.
While I’m not a complete sports fanatic, I remain an ardent NFL Fan. I was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area and my father created a rabid Steeler fan (me) at a very young age. I’ve celebrated in the 70″s when the Steeler’s won four Super bowls and then I moved to Boston. How could I possibly deny the Patriots with Tom Brady at the helm? It’s been a real pleasure to live through the rise and fall of those dynasties. Todays post will test your memory when you attempt to identify these players by their nicknames. As always the answers will be listed below.
Who was known as TheAssassin?
Who was nicknamed Bronco?
Who was known as Crazy Legs?
Who was The Galloping Ghost?
Who besides Deion Sanders was once called Hollywood?
Who was The Toe?
Tom Brady #2 Fav
Who was Broadway Joe?
Who was nicknamed Night Train?
Who was Tombstone?
Who was called White Shoes?
Who was known as The Alabama Antelope?
Who was The Flying Dutchman?
Baker Mayfield #3 Fav
🏈🏈🏈
GO STEELERS
GO PATRIOTS
GO BUCS
🏈🏈🏈
ANSWERS
Jack Tatum, Bronislau Nagurski, Elroy Hirsch, Harold “Red” Grange, Tom Henderson, Joe Namath, Dick Lane, Rich Jackson, Billy Johnson, Don Huston, Steve Van Buren, Lou Groza.
It’s once again time for me to justify this blog’s name. Here are twelve items of Useless Information that aren’t commonly known.
Although the earth is 70% water, just 1% of it is considered drinkable.
The first people to measure Mount Everest lied about tall it was. Their measurement was exactly 29,000 feet but they thought no one would believe it came to that exact measurement so they added two more feet to the total.
The animal with the longest hibernation period is a frog.
Every planet in the solar system could fit in the space between Earth and the moon even if you include Pluto.
Neil Armstrong claims that he actually said, “That’s one small step for a man” when he landed on the moon.
Arnold Schwarzenegger almost missed out on the title role in Terminator to none other than O.J. Simpson.
The mask worn by Michael Myers in the Halloween series was actually a white plastic Captain Kirk mask.
Bill Buckner had more career hits than Ted Williams.
No one has ever recorded a perfect March Madness bracket.
Cleopatra’s reign was closer to the date of the moon landings than the building of the pyramids.
The United States government once poisoned beer during prohibition.
The first bomb dropped by the Allies on Germany during World War II killed an elephant. It fell on the Berlin zoo.
It’s time for a short quiz to challenge all of you sports fanatics on sports other than the big three, NFL, NBA, and MLB. These questions are extremely random but I still found them interesting. Maybe you will as well. As always the answers will be listed below.
1. What card game gave us the term bilk?
2. What popular sport did Joe Sobek invent at the Greenwich, Connecticut, YMCA in 1950?
3. How many world records did swimmer Mark Spitz set when he won seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics?
4. In cross-country bike racing, what the initials BMX represent?
5. Who was the first Olympic gold medalist to win a professional world boxing title?
SUPER POLO
6. In the very first Boston Marathon, 15 runners competed. How many finished?
7. What professional ice hockey star didn’t hang up his skates until he was 52?
8. What was a fitting name of the first miniature golf course in the United States?
9. What popular sport was known in ancient Germany as Heidenwerfen?
10. In what sport is a stimpmeter used, and what does it measure?
AUSSIE HORSE RACING
Answers
Cribbage, Racquetball, 7, Bicycle Moto X, Floyd Patterson, 10, Gordy Howe, The Tom Thumb Golf Course, Bowling, Green Speed in Golf.
I acquired a joke book from an online thrift bookstore recently. It was a book titled “The Official Country & Western Joke Book”. I was looking forward to reading it and when it arrived I immediately dove right into it. It became painfully obvious within a few pages that the book was freaking awful. I searched through another eighty pages and couldn’t find one joke that made me even grin a little. That book was immediately removed from my archives and relegated to a paper bag located next to the trashcan. Todays post is PLAN B. Enjoy this mish/mosh of trivia.
The iconic theme song of the X-Files was created by accident when a producer accidentally hit the “echo” button on the control panel.
James Earl Jones was offered the lead in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which eventually went to Avery Brooks.
Samuel L. Jackson once held Martin Luther King Sr. hostage during a college demonstration at Morehead College.
Shaquille O’Neal made just one three point shot in his entire career. He only attempted 22 three-pointers for a 4.5% shooting percentage.
For 43 years the NFL’s record for the longest field goal was held by Tom Dempsey who was born with no toes on his kicking foot. His record setting 63 yard field goal in 1970 wasn’t broken until 2013.
At the height of his power, Pablo Escobar, spent $2500.00 a week on rubber bands that were needed to band the money he was bringing in.
At one time, the United States Rock-Paper-Scissors League was a real thing. The winning prize was $50,000.00.
It’s been a hectic week with life once again getting in the way. I thought a few tidbits of unusual trivia would keep everyone interested and entertained for a few minutes. Now I can return to my life such as it is.
The original name of Scrabble was “Lexico“. It was later called “Criss-Cross” before eventually becoming Scrabble.
During WWI sauerkraut was called “Liberty Cabbage” by the Americans. Hamburgers were called “Liberty Steaks“.
“Meetinghouse” was the WWII Allied codename for Tokyo.
The spacecraft Gemini 3 was nicknamed the “Molly Brown” by the astronauts Grissom and Young because in 1961 it sank upon reentry.
Alvin Karpus AKA “Old Creepy” was arrested by J. Edgar Hoover and sentenced to serve time in Alcatraz. He spent 26 years there from 1936-1952, more than any other inmate.
“Professor Tigwissel’s Burglar Alarm” was the first comic strip to appear in a newspaper, the New York Graphic, on September 11, 1875.
Betty Boop’s pet dog was named “Pudgy“.
The 1948 tune by Muddy Waters, “Rollin” Stone“, inspired the name of the rock group, the Rolling Stones.
Steve Trachsel was the Chicago pitcher who gave up Mark McGwire’s 62nd homerun in 1998 in Busch Stadium.
“A Wild Hare” was the 1940 Warner Brothers cartoon in which Bugs Bunny first said, “What’s Up Doc?”
👮🏻♂️👮🏻♂️👮🏻♂️
One of My Fav’s
“Manhattan Melodrama” was last movie watched by John Dillinger at the Biograph
Theatre in Chicago in 1934 just minutes before being gunned down by FBI agents.
The Stanley Cup has a number of misspelled words engraved on it. “BOSTON BRUINS” is spelled as “BQSTQN BRUINS”. “TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS” is “TORONTO MAPLE LEAES” and a number of misspelled players names have been added over the years.
Before Babe Ruth, the MLB’s career home run record was 138. When he retired the record was 714.
Nolan Ryan had seven no-hitters in his career but never a perfect game. His 2795 career walks are almost 1,000 more than the next closet pitcher.
The credit for breaking the racial barrier was not really Jackie Robinson. In 1879, Moses Fleetwood Walker played a full season in 1884, 63 years before Robinson.
The only team in the NFL to score three TD’s in a minute was the New England Patriots and they’ve done it twice.
The very first pick in the NFL draft never played a single game in the league. Jay Berwanger never signed with any team due to salary concerns.
Major League Baseball uses approximately 900,000 balls every season.
Wilt Chamberlain once averaged over 50 points a game for an entire season.
Here are a few semi-interesting trivia facts about a mish/mosh of subjects.
MAURY WILLS
“It Pays to Steal” is the title of Maury Wills’s 1963 autobiography. He was a famous base stealer.
The original name for the TV series, “The Rifleman” was “The Sharpshooter” in 1958.
The birthplace of George Washington in Virginia was Pope’s Creek Plantation in 1732.
The name of Boca Raton in Florida means “Rat’s Mouth” in Spanish.
The Detroit Lions NFL team was originally named “The Portsmouth Spartans” in 1934.
DETROIT LIONS
The Jamaican name of Ian Flemings home was “Goldeneye” where he wrote his first James Bond novel.
A well-known slogan used by Mad Magazine was “Humor in a Jugular Vein”.
Mel Brooks famous movie “Blazing Saddles” took place in the town of Rock Ridge.
The thespian puppet from Sesame Street was Meryl Sheep.
The term Zip Code was introduced in 1963 and means Zone Improvement Plan.
🐶🐶🐶
One of My Favs
Snoopy of “Peanuts” fame had a number of siblings. He had two sisters, Belle and Molly. He also had five brothers: Andy, Marbles, Rover, Olaf, and Spike.
everyuselessthing.com 