Trivia About Games and Sports

A perfect game in baseball is one in which the same player pitches the
entire game without allowing any player of the opposing team to reach
first base -- by any means.

At Jack Russell Stadium in
Clearwater, Florida, on June 26, 1985, organist Wilbur Snapp played
"Three Blind Mice" following a call by umpire Keith O'Connor. The
umpire was not amused, and saw to it that Mr. Snapp was ejected from
the game.

Babe Ruth hit his first major-league home run on May
6, 1915. He was playing for the Boston Red Sox at the time. 'The Sultan
of Swat' went on to smash 714 round-trippers before he retired, as a
New York Yankee, in 1935.

Baseball rules were codified in 1846 by Alexander Cartwright of the Knickerbocker Baseball Club.

Baseball's
National League was born in 1876. Eight competing baseball teams met in
New York City's Grand Central Hotel. The first president of the new
league was Morgan Gardner Bulkeley, who later became a US Senator. The
eight original cities with teams were: Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New
York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Louisville and Hartford. Two of the
original teams are now in the American League (Boston and New York)
while Louisville and Hartford are now minor-league baseball towns.

Baseball's home plate is 17 inches wide.

Basketball
was invented in 1891 by James Naismith. He set out to invent a game to
occupy students between the football and baseball seasons.

Each
king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:
Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne,
Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

Eddie Arcaro, one of the greatest
jockeys in horse race history, rode 250 losers before he won his first
race. Ultimately, Arcaro won 4,779 races - including five Derby
winners, six in the Preakness, and six in the Belmont Stakes, on such
famous horses as Whirlaway, Citation, and Kelso.

Golfers use an estimated $800 million worth of golf balls annually.

In
1905, 18 men died from injuries sustained on the football field.
President Theodore Roosevelt stepped in and instituted safety measures
to make the game safer.

In 1970, 127 runners ran the NY Marathon. In 1998, 32,000 did.

In a typical season major league baseball will require 4,800 ash trees worth of Louisville sluggers.

In playing poker, there is one chance in 500 of drawing a flush.

Olympic badminton rules say that the bird has to have exactly fourteen feathers.

On February 6, 1971 the first golf ball was hit on the moon by Alan Shepard.

Parker
Brothers was founded by George Swinerton Parker, 18, in 1885. The first
game produced was 'Banking,' in which the player who amasses the most
wealth is the winner.

Pitcher Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati
Reds hurled his first major-league game in 1944. Nuxhall, the youngest
pitcher in major league baseball, was only 15 years, 10 months and 11
days old when he pitched that game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Poland's
Stella Walsh (Stanislawa Walasiewicz)-won the women's 100-meter race at
the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, becoming the first woman to break the
12-second barrier. When she was killed in 1980 as an innocent victim in
a robbery attempt, an autopsy declared her to be a male.

Sir
Barton won the Belmont Stakes in New York in 1919, to become the first
horse to capture the Triple Crown. This was the first time that the
Belmont Stakes had been run as part of thoroughbred racing's most
prestigious trio of events. Sir Barton had already won the first two
jewels of the Triple Crown -- the Kentucky Derby in Louisville,
Kentucky and the Preakness Stakes in Maryland.

The 'huddle' in
football was formed due to a deaf football player who used sign
language to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see
the signals he used and in turn huddled around him.

The annual White House Easter egg-roll was started by President Hayes in 1878.

The dimensions of a regulation football field are: 360 feet long and 160 feet wide.

The distance between the pitcher's rubber and home plate in baseball is 60 feet, 6 inches.

The first Rose Bowl game was held in 1902 in Pasadena, California. The University of Michigan beat Sanford 49-0.

The first black player in the American League was Larry Doby with the Cleveland Indians in 1947.

The
first cover of "Sports Illustrated," in 1954, showed National League
umpire, Augie Donatelli, behind the plate with two major-league stars:
catcher Wes Westrum, and batter Eddie Matthews.

First Instant
Replay was used during Army Navy Football Game at Municipal Stadium
Philadelphia on December 7, 1963, invented by Tony Verna (CBS
Director.)

The first Kentucky Derby was run at Churchill Downs in 1875 with Aristides as winner.

The first NBA player to score 38,000 points was Kareem Abdul-Jabar in 1989.

The
first pick (by Eagles) in the first NFL draft in 1935, was Jay
Berwanger from the University of Chicago. He never played in the league


The first players elected to Baseball Hall of Fame were Ty
Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson & Walter Johnson
in 1936.

The first professional football team to sport an
insignia on their helmets was the Los Angeles Rams in 1950, who hand
painted yellow horns on their blue leather helmets.

The first Soccer World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930 and attracted 13 competing countries.

The
first Super Bowl was played in 1967. The Green Bay Packers of the
National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the
American Football League, 35-to-10.

The first triple jump in figure skating competition was performed by Dick Button in 1952.

The
first Wimbledon Tennis Competition took place in 1877 solely as an
amateur competition. Men's singles was the only event that took place.
There were 22 competitors and the championship was won by Spencer Gore.


The Four Horsemen of the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame played
together for the last time in 1925, as the Irish downed Stanford in the
Rose Bowl, 27-10. The Four Horsemen were Jim Crowley, Elmer Layden, Don
Miller and Harry Stuhldreher.

The game of volleyball was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan.

The high jump method of jumping head first and landing on the back is called the Fosbury Flop.

The largest baseball card collection, 200,000 cards, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The
modern Olympic Games were held in the first time in 1896 at Athens and
were then followed by the 1900 Paris games. The winter games were added
in 1924.

The oiuja board was invented by Isaac and William Fuld, and was patented July 1, 1892.

The Olympic Games were held in St. Louis, MO. In 1904, the first time that the games were held in the United States.

The
only father and son to hit back-to-back home runs in a major league
baseball game: Ken Griffey, Jr., and his father, Ken Griffey, Sr., both
of the Seattle Mariners in a game against the California Angels on
September 14th, 1990.

The Ouija board is named for the French and German words for yes - oui and ja.

The Vince Lombardi Trophy is awarded to the winners of the Super Bowl.

The
world's first roller coaster opened in 1884 at Coney Island, New York.
It was designed by Lemarcus Thompson, a former Sunday school teacher.

There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different color combinations possible on a Rubik's Cube.

The
World Rubik Cube championship was held in Budapest on June 5, 1982.
Nineteen National Champions took part. Minh Thai, the US Champion, won
by solving the Cube in of 22.95 seconds. The world record, in
competitive conditions, grew progressively lower and now stands at 16.5
seconds.

There are 100 tiles in a 'Scrabble' crossword game.

There are 2,598,960 five-card hands possible in a 52-card deck of cards.

There are nine rooms on a 'Clue' game board. A forfeited baseball game is recorded as a 9-0 score.

Until 1967 it wasn't illegal for Olympic athletes to use drugs to enhance their performance during competition.

Until the 1870s, baseball was played without the use of gloves.

When
Henry Aaron hit his 715th Home Run, breaking Babe Ruth's record, the
pitcher who served it up was Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
They were both wearing number 44.

Wild Bill Hickok was killed playing poker, holding two pairs - aces and eights, which has become known as 'Dead Man's Hand.'