Second to One Trivia Quiz

Answer: place

The "show" bet also pays if the horse finishes third. The daily double refers to a bet where the wagerer picks the winning horse in two (usually the first two) consecutive races. Silver is the lone ranger's horse, not a wager.

Answer: Smarty Jones

Smarty Jones was born and bred in Chester County, PA, outside the usual racing inner sanctum. Because of his smaller than normal physical stature and outsider status, he developed a huge following as a blue collar champion and an underdog (underhorse?). Unfortunately in the Belmont, several other strong horses ran at him early and he weakened in the stretch, just losing out to Birdsong.

Answer: "The zen of second place doesn't align with the cosmos" - Phil Jackson

Phil Jackson, NBA champion coach and basketball guru, said some obscure things, but he never said this. Earnhardt was known on the NASCAR circuit as "the intimidator." Ironically, he finished second four times and experienced nineteen years of failure at the Daytona 500, the race he valued above all others, before finally winning it in 1998. Durocher was the feisty and combative manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s. Lombardi, legendary coach of the Green bay Packers, may be the most quoted sports figure ever on the philosophy of winning.

Answer: John Landy (Australia)

Although remembered world wide for breaking the four minute barrier after Bannister and also losing to him in the "miracle mile" in Vancouver, John Landy ran a world record mile time of 3:58.0 on June 21st, 1954, less than two months after Bannister's historic first.

He held the world record for that distance and the 1500 meters for much of the next few years. Jim Ryan is the most famous American miler of all time, holding the world record for eight years with a time of 3:51.1 run in 1967 when he was only twenty years old.

Answer: Jim Kelly

Hall of Famer Jim Kelly led the excellent Buffalo Bills teams of the early 1990s which dominated the AFC but could never get over the hump in the Super Bowl. The closest they came was the first of those four -- the 1990 season and Super Bowl XXV (January '91), which they lost to the New York Giants 20-19 when Scott Norwood missed a last second field goal. Tarkenton quarterbacked the Minnesota Vikings in three Superbowls, also losing each time. Marino led the Dolphins to only one Superbowl, after the 1984 season, and they got trounced by San Francisco 38-16. Tittle lost in three title games with the New York Giants in the early 1960s, before the Super Bowl era.

Answer: Michael Jordan

1984 was perhaps the strongest draft class in NBA history, yielding four Hall of Fame players in the first sixteen picks. In addition to Jordan at number three, Hakeem Olajuwan went first to the Rockets, Charles Barkley went fifth to the 76ers, and John Stockton went at number sixteen to Utah.

The three incorrect answers were all number one overall picks: Johnson-1979 to LA; Iverson-1996 to Philadelphia; James-2003 to Cleveland.

Answer: USSR

The USSR was awarded the silver medal even though they lost to the US in the semifinal game. Points were awarded based on results in the final round AND first round game against the other finals team in your bracket. This meant the US tie with Sweden put them behind Soviet Union (which beat Finland earlier) going into the finals. To put it simply, if the US had lost the final game to Finland, the "miracle on ice" would have lost its golden luster.

Answer: Montreal Canadiens over Boston Bruins

It's the big bad Bruins who were dominated. For some reason, Les Canadiens have been like kryptonite to the Bruins. Six of those 18 were the Stanley Cup final: 1946, 1953, 1957, 1958, 1977 and 1978.

Answer: Walter "Big Train" Johnson

The Big Train is the number two man in career wins. Every reasonable baseball historian concludes that with the changes in the modern game, including night baseball and the advent of the relief specialist, no pitcher will ever come close to the win totals of Young and Johnson. Johnson played twenty one years for the Washington Senators, 1907-1927, dominating the league and striking out hitters at an unprecedented clip. Upon his retirement, he held the career strikeout record of 3,508, a record which stood for fifty years, and the record for shutouts with 110, another record which may never be broken.

Answer: Mickey Mantle

Mantle and Maris, Yankee teammates, thrilled the baseball world with their pursuit of Ruth's hallowed record. By September, the pressure on Maris became intense as the public was pulling for Mantle, the bigger star, to be the one who broke the record. Maris was a solid, unassuming ballplayer who really had no interest in the limelight and just wanted to play ball and be left alone.

Unfortunately, with the New York media, that was impossible. Maris lost sleep and even some of his hair because of the stress! He finally tied the record in game 155 and hit the record setting sixty first homer in game 159.

Many bitter baseball lifers continued to downgrade the accomplishment, preferring to focus on how Maris had eight extra game in which to break the record due to a longer season. Most record books contain an asterisk by the record, pointing out this fact. Gentile and Killebrew each hit 46 homers to finish tied for third in the 1961 AL home run table.