Buster Posey Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bengie Molina

Bengie Molina is one of three brothers who not only all played major league baseball, but all won World Series championships. His two younger brothers are José and Yadier Molina. Bengie played for the Giants from 2007 until he was traded to Texas midway through the 2010 season, when the Giants made rookie Buster Posey their full-time starting catcher. That meant Molina faced the Giants in that year's World Series.

He had also faced them, and won, in the 2002 World Series, when he played for the Anaheim Angels. Bengie twice won the Willie Mac award, in 2007 and 2008, given to the most inspirational Giants player, as voted by his teammates.

Answer: Willie McCovey

2012 was a great year for Posey and the Giants. Posey's 2011 campaign had ended after less than two months, after a horrific collision at the plate caused a devastating leg and ankle injury requiring season-ending surgery. But the following year he won the batting title with a .336 average (which led both leagues) and the Hank Aaron award (given to the leagues' top hitters, as selected by fans and media voting), the NL MVP, the Silver Slugger award for best offensive play by a catcher in the NL, the Giants' Willie Mac award, and the first of two NL Comeback Player of the Year awards. He was also named to the NL All-Star team for the first time.

Willie McCovey debuted with the Giants in 1959, their second season in San Francisco, and, like Buster Posey, would go on to win Rookie of the Year, NL Most Valuable Player, and NL Comeback Player of the Year (although it was not an official MLB award at the time) during an illustrious Hall of Fame career. The inlet next to the Giants' home stadium is called McCovey Cove in his honor.

An interesting footnote about the 2012 season is that Posey's Giants teammate Melky Cabrera actually had a higher 2012 average, at .346, but Cabrera was declared ineligible for the batting title and was suspended for 50 games for violating MLB's policy on performance-enhancing substances.

Answer: Johnny Bench

The Buster Posey Award honors the best catcher playing college baseball in the NCAA's Division I. The award is administered by the Wichita Sports Commission and is given each year following the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. It was first given in 2000, and was known as the Johnny Bench Award at the time.

However, in 2019, Johnny Bench created his own award for catchers playing in amateur baseball, so the commission elected to rename their award after one of its 19 prior recipients, choosing Buster Posey unanimously for this honor.

Answer: Matt Cain

On June 13, 2012, Matt Cain threw the 22nd perfect game in MLB history, with Buster behind the plate. He also caught Tim Lincecum's first no-hitter in 2013, played first base in Lincecum's second no-no in 2014 (both against San Diego), and caught Chris Heston's 2015 no-hitter versus the Mets.

Jonathan Sánchez threw a no-hitter for the Giants in 2009 (also against San Diego), a performance that would have been a perfect game but for an eighth-inning error by shortstop Juan Uribe. However, this game did not involve Buster Posey, who was still playing in the minor leagues at the time.

Answer: Houston Astros

Buster said he was the most nervous he'd ever been on a baseball diamond that night as he shepherded the Giants' starter towards his perfect game (PG), during which he recorded 14 strikeouts, tying the record held by Sandy Koufax for most Ks during a PG. One of the rarest feats in baseball, a perfect game requires that a pitcher face 27 batters and record 27 outs, without allowing a single base-runner. It was the first PG in Giants history, going back to the team's founding in the 19th century. The Giants beat the Astros 10-0 that night. J.A. Happ was the losing pitcher.

None of the wrong answers play in the American League.

Answer: 17th inning

In the days before the extra-inning "ghost runner" made 17-inning regular season games extremely unlikely, it was still very uncommon for games to go that long (it's nearly twice the number of innings in a regular game). Buster, who had been hit in his left quad by a deflected pitch in the top of the 17th, admitted that he was just glad it was over, saying, "it gets to the point...that your body hurts. There's no way around it. It just hurts." His blast was a no-doubter, landing more than half-way up the bleacher section, which was sparsely populated by that hour. It was Buster's fourth career walk-off home run, and second to come in extra innings, after he beat the San Diego Padres in the 10th inning of the game on July 16th, 2016. It was also his second home run in three days. The home run actually occurred in the early hours of May 13th, but MLB records do not account for games that continue past midnight, so it is recorded as part of the game that happened on May 12th. The final score was 3-2.

The previous record had been held by Willie Mays, who hit a walk-off home run in the 16th inning of a game against the Milwaukee Braves on July 2, 1963.

None of the wrong answers are prime numbers.

Answer: Three

Buster won the World Series as a player three times, all with the San Francisco Giants.

In 2010, his rookie season, they beat Texas, four games to one for the team's first title since 1954 (which was before they moved from New York to San Francisco). In 2012, they swept the Detroit Tigers in four games. In 2014, they needed seven games to edge out the Kansas City Royals for their third Commissioner's Trophy in five years. Buster joined Pete Rose second member of the club of MLB players to win Rookie of the Year, league MVP, and three World Series in their careers.

Answer: False

Buster Posey won the National League Comeback Player award in 2012, when he led the majors in batting and also nabbed the NL MVP title, as well as in 2021, when he led the San Francisco Giants to a franchise-record 107 wins and became the sixth player--and the first catcher--to bat over .300 in the their final season.

But he is joined as a two-time winner by pitcher Francisco Liriano, who won the award once in each league, first in 2010 while playing for the Minnesota Twins, and then in 2013 while playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Answer: Gerald

Buster's full given name is Gerald Dempsey Posey III. He was born on March 27, 1987 in Leesburg, Georgia. His father, Gerald Dempsey Posey II is usually called Demp, but had the nickname Buster as a child, and took to calling his own son by that name once his son was born. Growing up in Georgia, Buster was a supporter of the Atlanta Braves as a kid.

He graduated fourth in his high school class of 302 students, posting a 3.94 grade point average.

Answer: Madison Bumgarner

Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner's 2010 feat of starting a World Series game when they were both rookies was the first time it had happened since Spec Shea and Yogi Berra started games one, five, and seven for the New York Yankees on their way to defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers in the close-fought 1947 World Series. Posey and Bumgarner would go on to set multiple post-season and world series records for ERA and consecutive scoreless innings over multiple years.

In game two of the 2012 World Series (WS), with Posey again catching, Bumgarner threw seven scoreless innings, giving up only two hits and striking out eight, extending his streak of scoreless WS innings to fifteen, and becoming the first Giant since Christy Mathewson in 1905 to give up no runs in his first two career WS starts. In the 2014 World Series, he would finally concede a run in the seventh inning of game one, ending his streak of scoreless WS innings to start his career at 21 innings. That run, the only earned run ever allowed by Bumgarner in his WS career, also ended a streak of consecutive post-season scoreless innings pitched on the road at 32⅔ innings. He and Buster then engineered a complete game, four-hit shutout to win game five, and finished the decisive game seven with five more shut-out innings, protecting a one-run lead the whole time, and earning Bumgarner his first career save.

Bumgarner set a new all-time MLB record for lowest career WS ERA among pitchers who started at least three games and pitched at least 25 innings, at an astounding 0.25, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest World Series pitchers of all time, with 4-0 win/loss record and 31 strikeouts in 36 innings. For his post-season career, he was 8-3 with a 2.11 ERA, three complete game shutouts, the aforementioned save, and 87 strikeouts in 102⅓ innings.

One last thing to note... in July of 2014, Posey and Bumgarner became the only pitcher-catcher battery in MLB history to both hit grand slams in the same game!