Today is Saturday (the first Saturday of March!), which means it’s time to continue working our way through Opening Day starters the Sox have rolled out over the years. As you may have guessed from the title, middle infielders are the next bunch up, so we’ll be looking for the second basemen and shortstops to man those positions for that first game of the season from 1980-2018. As with last week, that’s 78 names total: how many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 15 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, all players are grouped by year, with the date and position listed for reference.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- The shortstop/second base pairing has been pretty variable over the years. The longest stretch with the same two players on Opening Day is four years.
- Here is one of last year’s tidbits:
If you were to add up all the home runs on this list hit by a second baseman or a shortstop, it would amount to zero. That’s right: since 1990, no shortstop or second baseman has hit a home run on Opening Day.
(Here’s one name, which you’ll get anyway: Tim Anderson changed that last year, with two dingers against the Royals.)
All data from baseballreference.com
75/78. Could’ve  had all three I missed. Disappointed. 2017,1986,1980 second basemen. Boomer has 72 though so chalk another one up for the bad guy!
The 1980 second baseman was Jimmy Piersall’s pick for MVP of that team!
If I’m not mistaken it was Harry that had the 2B as the team MVP whereas Piersall went with Squires for team MVP.
You may be right; I remember Jimmy praising both the 2B’s hitting and defense.
Here’s a link to the telecast. At 25:51 Jimmy and Harry discuss their picks for team’s best player. Harry interviews Morrison in the On Deck Show. Interestingly, at 23.56, Jimmy comments on the uniforms and says that the players liked them as very comfortable but just didn’t like the colors. Somebody should have sent this video to Sale.
78/78, and this one kept reminding me of some of the answers’ returns in trade.
78/78. Finally got em all right.
74/78. I always miss a few, it seems. I’ll bet I would have done better had it gone back to 1970. I remember players of my childhood better than some of those of my adult years.
I wish it went back just a little earlier so I could write
A childhood favorite. I also would remember obscurities such as
And who could forget [“Jack Brohamer”]and [Eddie Leon]