Last season, Omar Vizquel retired after a 24-year major league career and many notable achievements. But, probably one you weren’t aware of is this – Vizquel is the only player to bat against both Jerry Reuss and Yu Darvish.
The search for such morsels of obscurity can be aided by consulting the Oracle of Baseball, one of the tools available on B-R in its “Frivolities” section. The tool lets you find linkages across baseball history from one player to another, based on common teammates. Thus, if you were to ask the Oracle to link Deacon White with Buster Posey, you could get an answer like:
Deacon White played with Frank Scheibeck for the 1888 Detroit Wolverines Frank Scheibeck played with Charley O'Leary for the 1906 Detroit Tigers Charley O'Leary played with Bruce Campbell for the 1934 St. Louis Browns Bruce Campbell played with Lou Boudreau for the 1938 Cleveland Indians Lou Boudreau played with Minnie Minoso for the 1949 Cleveland Indians Minnie Minoso played with Rich Gossage for the 1976 Chicago White Sox Rich Gossage played with Randy Johnson for the 1994 Seattle Mariners Randy Johnson played with Buster Posey for the 2009 San Francisco Giants
This quiz is something like playing the Baseball Oracle. With a few wrinkles. Audience participation is required. Lots of answers (at least twenty-one) for you to shout out as you find them.
Thanks to our readers for identifying twenty-four correct answers to the quiz, and congratulations to RJ for finding the most correct answers. Answers are after the jump.
For this quiz, there are 55 players listed alphabetically below. I’ve done a little sleuthing and I’m pretty confident that, using only the players in the quiz, there are at least twenty-one true assertions that can be stated as:
<player 1> is the only player to play with/against both <player 2> and <player 3>
A few things to note:
- The three players in each assertion must be different
- Assertions can link players either as teammates or as opponents
- The linkage must be exclusive – there can be no other players (whether in the quiz or not) who can be substituted for <player 1> and who also have the stated relationship with <player 2> and <player 3> (thereby disproving the assertion)
- In the twenty-one assertions I’ve found, each of the 55 players in the quiz is referenced at least once
Proof that the assertion is true:
- Assertion that a player played with another is that they played on the same team at the same time; if no common box score, then both must have played in games for that team no more than a month apart; or, if boxscores unavailable (pre-1916), then on a reasonable balance of probabilities
- Assertion that a player played against another is supported by a box score; or by proximate boxscores (i.e. player was likely on lineup card, if not in game) ; or by a reasonable balance of probabilities if boxscores are unavailable (pre-1916)
- Assertion that the relationship is exclusive is supported by logical inference (e.g. span of careers, teams played for, leagues played in) or absence of linking boxscores for alternative players not excluded by logical inference
So, here are the quiz players, mostly recognizable names. Call out your answers as you find them. Don’t need to provide the proofs (you can make educated guesses), but I will comment (and others can too) to disprove false assertions.
The highlighted names above have not yet been mentioned in any correct assertions. Players with names crossed out are no longer part of the quiz (owing to author’s error).
Here are the answers in tabular form. How many more can you find?
[table id=150 /]