Good morning!
With Spring Training games nearly upon us and Opening Day about six weeks away, there's just enough time in the calendar to begin testing your knowledge on the Opening Day starters of 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 before Opening Day will be every single player to make a start on Opening Day all the way back to 1940.
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 168 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 4-6 on Opening Day over the 1940s: Cleveland was their most common opponent, with six games; the Sox went 4-2 against them.
- The most runs scored during this decade on an Opening Day was just 5 runs, a 5-2 victory over Cleveland on April 17, 1945.
- The fewest runs scored was, duh, zero. The Sox were shut out four separate times: two 1-0 losses to Cleveland in 1940 and 1946 and back-to-back 3-0 shutouts against the Browns in 1942 and 1943.
All data from baseballreference.com
