Baseball Records & Quirks Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rickey Henderson

It is not even close. Henderson was caught 335 total times in his career (1979-2003), while Cobb was nabbed 215 times (1905-1928). Rod Carew had 187 (1967-1985) and Curt Flood was gunned down 71 times (1956-1971). That said, Cobb Carew and Flood combined did not successfully steal as many bases as Henderson did.

Henderson took 1,406 total bags, while the aforementioned three combined barely surpass 1,000.

Answer: Roughly 4,000-4,500

Cobb recorded a staggering 4,189 base hits in his career. Having played 24 seasons (1905-1928), that is an average of nearly 200 hits a season. His batting average of .366 was incredibly robust and well ahead of its time. His bat did have a fair bit of pop to it as well, as Cobb launched off 117 homers in his career.

Answer: Todd Helton

This Colorado Rockie had 59 in 2000 and Delgado had 57. Biggio and A-rod weren't even in the top five in doubles that season.

Answer: Pud Galvin

Galvin had 6003.1 innings pitched, which edges the other three men out by a lot. Keefe barely made it into the 5K mark, hurling 5,049 innings. Welch and Millane fell short of that mark entirely, with 4,802 and 4,531 innings pitched respectively.

Answer: Don Newcombe

Newcombe won the award in 1956 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He held a strong win/loss record of 27-7 that season.

Answer: Bill Singer

Singer pitched three scoreless innings of relief to finish out the game, as his LA Dodgers defeated the Cincinnati Reds 3-2 on April 7th of the 1969 season.

A save is generally recorded in one of two ways, conventionally. The first is a reliever entering the game in the 9th inning, with his team winning the game by three or less runs. The second, less common scenario is a pitcher to finish the game, having not been a starter, entering the game with his team in the lead by any amount of runs, and pitching at least three full innings in the process. If a reliever enters the game to start the 7th inning, with his team up 100-0, and he finishes the game, he earns the save despite how lopsided the game was.

Answer: John Johnstone

A "hold" is when a relief pitcher enters a game, with his team leading by a margin of three or less runs. If that pitcher completes a full inning without allowing the game to be tied, he earns a hold. It is important to distinguish this from a save: a "hold" is specifically for when the reliever does not finish the entire game, while a "save" can only be earned if the pitcher finishes the game having entered in relief.

John Johnstone of the San Francisco Giants recorded 28 holds in 1999, barely edging out the Oakland Athletics' Buddy Groom who had 27.

Answer: 21

At the time, a 21 pitch at bat was the longest at bat in MLB history, a statistic which had been tracked since 1988. In real time, the at bat took just over thirteen whole minutes to finish.

In the end, Belt ended up harmlessly flying out. While it did not put any runs on the board or even set anyone up to score, forcing the opposing pitcher to devote 21 pitches to just a single at bat can be extremely crippling for the pitcher and his team. As pitchers are only generally allowed to throw around 100 pitches before being pulled, that would mean Barria wouldn't have even lasted two full innings at this pace! Considering you need five innings just to qualify for the win, needless to say, Barria may have barely won the battle, but Belt absolutely won the war. Fittingly, his Giants won the game by a score of 5-2.

Answer: Number of pitches thrown

Oquendo threw a whopping 65 pitches; for an actual pitcher, this is barely worth a passing glance. But for a position player, this would have likely been akin to running a marathon. Speaking of marathons, that's exactly why the Braves even had to ask Oquendo to throw this many pitches. In the middle of the 16th inning, Atlanta simply ran out of pitchers. As such, they were forced to start sending position players to the mound to pitch.

To his credit, Oquendo responded incredibly valiantly. He pitched nearly four innings where he gave up a lot of hits, but through three innings, no runs on the ledger. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse for Oquendo, and he gave up two runs with two outs in the top of the 19th which ended up deciding the game. The Braves took the game by a score of 7-5.

Answer: Darkness

Perhaps even more outrageous about this game is the fact that both starters for this game, Leon Cadore of Brooklyn and Joe Oeschger of Boston, managed to pitch the full 26 innings each, no bullpen required whatsoever. It is estimated that both of them threw around 340 pitches each, which in the modern era would be just about three full starts' worth.