Good morning!
With Spring Training games a week away and Opening Day about five weeks after that, there’s just enough time on the calendar to begin testing your knowledge of the Opening Day starters throughout years past.
Whether it’s your first rodeo or you simply need a refresher on how this is going to work: each week I’ll highlight a single, pair, or trio of positions and the players who manned those positions on Opening Day for the White Sox. At the culmination of the exercise, the final Sporcle(s) --these have become too big to fit into just one quiz!-- before Opening Day will be every single player to make a start on Opening Day all the way back to 1930.
As the title of the post notes, this week we’ll start with the catchers and pitchers to make a start on Opening Day. With the new decade added, that’s 190 entries: how many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 20 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, players are grouped by year.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- The White Sox were 6-4 on Opening Day over the 1930s: The Browns and Tigers were their most common opponent on Opening Day with 4 matches apiece. The Sox went 3-1 against the Browns and split against the Tigers, 2-2.
- The most runs scored during this decade on an Opening Day was 10 runs, a 15-10 barnburner loss at St. Louis in 1937.
- The fewest runs scored on an Opening Day was 1, a 6-1 loss in Detroit in 1939.
All data from baseballreference.com
