HITS OR STRIKES?
Answers to the Bay Area Baseball Trivia quiz
Did you strike out, get on base or hit a walk-off homer? Here are the answers to the Bay Area Baseball Trivia quiz that starts on page 54.
1.
D— Oakland A’s Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, known as the Bash Brothers, began smashing their forearms together at home plate after hitting homers or scoring. It was just something that looked cool, but it ended up earning them their nickname when they posed for a poster, riffing off The Blues Brothers.
2.
C— The amazing Joe DiMaggio showed his potential while playing for the San Francisco Seals, hitting safely in 61 consecutive games.
3.
A—The one and hopefully only Crazy Crab. The Padres were not his only assailants during the 1982 season. The giant orange crustacean was regularly attacked by Giants fans, too, who threw beer bottles and other objects at him. Crazy survived, though, and made several cameo appearances since then.
4.
C— Waddell routinely ate animal crackers in bed, leaving crumbs in the sheets, much to his roomie’s dismay.
5.
B— Henderson framed the check — without cashing it — as a reminder that he had made it in the big leagues. The A’s ended up issuing a duplicate check to balance the books.
Oakland A’s mascot Stomper and his partner Grady dance it out before a game in 2004.
6.
B— Befuddled by the BART map, Ortiz and some of his teammates ended up on a train bound for Richmond. Who knew BART could be confusing?
7.
C— Giant’s Bengie Molina was replaced on first by a pinch runner, who rounded the bases when the single was changed to a home run.
7th
Inning Stretch. A — The Philadelphia A’s had bought up the contracts of a lot of talented and highpriced players, which may have triggered a bit of envy from the New York Giants’ manager, who predicted the team was going to be a white elephant, an expensive, useless object no one really wants. Owner Connie Mack was amused and adopted the elephant as the team mascot.
8.
B— Corinne Mullane became the first “ball dudette.” 9.
A — What set the A’s apart, at least in the beginning of the season, was all the facial hair, from Reggie Jackson’s mustache to Rollie Fingers’ handlebar.
10.
A — Chris Brown strained his eyelid by “sleeping on it funny.” Sometimes the truth is stranger than the fiction.
11.
A — The little town of Dunsmuir hosted the mighty Babe Ruth in an exhibition game. Tickets were $1.10, and the mayor declared a half-day holiday so the entire town could turn out.
12.
D — Only 6,298 people were in the stands that day, although if you ask people now, that number grows by a factor of 10.
13.
C — Tennis legend Billie Jean King became part owner of the Dodgers in 2018, but says she and her brother, pitcher Randy Moffitt, “grew up bleeding Dodger blue” as kids. King admired her brother’s skill playing for the Giants but insisted he played for the wrong team.
14.
B — It was Jim Mutrie’s heartfelt utterance, calling his teammates his giants, that gave the team its name two years after its founding.
15.
B — The Stockton Ports claim title to the legend. Before incorporating in the 1850s, the town was known as Mudville — and in 1902, the team was called the Mudville Nine. Case closed.
Opposite: San Francisco Giants’ Buster Posey catches a pitch during spring training at Scottsdale Stadium in 2020.