50 Fun Facts About MLB Baseball Trivia for Kids

How many teams play in Major League Baseball?

30 teams, 15 in the National League and 15 in the American League. In 2013 the Houston Astros switched leagues so that each one would have the same number.

How many players does each baseball team have on the field at once?

Nine: a pitcher, a catcher, four infielders and three outfielders. That is why a baseball team is sometimes simply called a nine.

What happens if a Major League game is still tied after the ninth inning?

They keep playing extra frames, called extra innings, until one team is ahead when an inning ends. Since 2020 each extra inning of a regular-season game has started with a runner already on second base.

How many outs does the fielding team need to end the other team's turn at bat?

Three. Each team bats until it makes three outs, so the winners of a nine-inning game have to collect 27 outs in all.

What is the umpire's call when a batter swings and misses, or lets a good pitch go by?

A strike. A foul ball counts as a strike too, but an ordinary foul can never be the third one that puts the batter out.

If the pitcher throws four balls to a batter, what happens?

A free walk to first base, also called a base on balls. Since 2017 a team that wants to walk a batter on purpose can simply signal from the dugout, with no pitches thrown.

A home run with runners on every base is called what?

A grand slam scores four runs, the most possible on one hit. Don Mattingly hit a record six in 1987, and they were the only grand slams of his whole career.

How far apart are the bases on a Major League field?

90 feet. The four bases mark the corners of a square, so a batter who hits a home run jogs 360 feet to get all the way back to home plate.

In Major League Baseball, what is a soft tap of the ball made without swinging the bat called?

A bunt. Batters sometimes bunt knowing they will be thrown out, a sacrifice that lets a teammate move up a base.

What colour is the thread that stitches a baseball together?

Red. Every ball is still sewn by hand with 108 stitches of waxed red thread, because machines have never managed to do the job properly.

What nickname do fans give the World Series, baseball's championship?

The Fall Classic. The series normally belongs to October, but in 2001, after a delayed season, a game ran past midnight on October 31 and the stadium scoreboard flashed 'Welcome to November Baseball'.

What stopped the 1904 World Series from being played?

A boycott. The Giants refused to play, their owner dismissing the new American League as inferior, and the only other year without a Series was 1994, when a dispute between players and owners cut the season short.

Which part of New York City is home to the Yankees, winners of the most World Series titles?

The Bronx, which is why they are called the Bronx Bombers. They began in Manhattan as the New York Highlanders and only became the Yankees in 1913.

Which is the only Major League team based outside the United States?

The Toronto Blue Jays have been the only one since 2005, when the Montreal Expos moved to the US capital and became the Washington Nationals.

Where did the Dodgers play before they moved to Los Angeles in 1958?

Brooklyn. The Dodgers won just one World Series there, in 1955, after losing to the Yankees in all five of their earlier meetings.

Which ballpark, opened in 1912, is the oldest still used in the Major Leagues?

Fenway Park in Boston. It is so old-fashioned that the scoreboard in left field is still changed by hand.

What is the nickname of the left-field landmark at Boston's ballpark?

The Green Monster is a wall just over 37 feet high. It was not painted green until 1947; before that it was covered in advertisements.

Which big-league ballpark has ivy growing all over its brick outfield wall?

Wrigley Field. The ivy was planted in 1937, and when a batted ball gets stuck in the leaves the hitter is given a double.

Which team ended a 108-year wait for a World Series title in 2016?

The Cubs. They ended the longest title wait in big American sports by coming back from 3-1 down to beat Cleveland in seven games.

Which famous slugger was nicknamed 'the Bambino' and 'the Sultan of Swat'?

Babe Ruth began as a star pitcher and won 94 games on the mound in his career, most of them before he switched to hitting home runs full time.

How many home runs did the Bambino hit in 1927, a record that stood for decades?

60, a record that stood for 34 years. Pitchers could not just walk him to stay out of trouble, because the equally feared Lou Gehrig batted next.

Which team went 86 years without a title after selling its star, 'the Bambino', to the Yankees?

The Boston Red Sox. Fans called it the Curse of the Bambino, and it ended in 2004, when Boston beat the Yankees after losing the first three games of their playoff series.

Who became the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era, in 1947?

Jackie Robinson took the field for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947, and won the first Rookie of the Year award, a prize that has carried his name since 1987.

Which uniform number is retired by every Major League team in honour of the man who broke baseball's colour line?

Number 42 was retired across baseball in 1997, yet every April 15 every player on every team wears it for a day.

Which Braves slugger passed the Bambino's career home run record in 1974?

Hank Aaron. He finished with 755 home runs without ever hitting 50 in a season; his best year was 47.

Which 'Iron Man' broke Lou Gehrig's record by playing 2,632 games in a row?

Cal Ripken Jr. He did not miss a game for more than 16 years, and the streak ended in 1998 only because he chose to sit one out.

Which Yankees shortstop, nicknamed 'the Captain', fell one vote short of a unanimous Hall of Fame election?

Derek Jeter got 396 of 397 votes in 2020, a year after his old teammate Mariano Rivera became the first player ever elected unanimously.

Shohei Ohtani is a 'two-way player', which means what?

He is a star pitcher and a star hitter. In 2022 the league even changed a rule, nicknamed the Ohtani rule, so that he could keep batting after his pitching was done.

Which country is Shohei Ohtani from?

Japan. He wanted to join an American team straight from high school, but the Nippon-Ham Fighters drafted him anyway and he stayed for five seasons.

Which Yankees slugger set an American League record with 62 home runs in 2022?

Aaron Judge. Before that season the Yankees offered him a $213.5 million extension and the two sides could not agree; after it they signed him for $360 million.

Which pitcher holds the career record for strikeouts, with 5,714?

Nolan Ryan. He was also the wildest pitcher of all: his 2,795 walks are a record too, over 50% more than anyone else has given up.

A pitcher who retires every batter from start to finish, nobody reaching base, has thrown what?

A perfect game means no hits, no walks and no errors. In 2010 Armando Galarraga lost one on the very last out when an umpire wrongly called the runner safe.

Which hitter bats for the pitcher without fielding, a rule the National League resisted until 2022?

A designated hitter. The American League brought the idea in back in 1973, so for almost half a century the two leagues played by different rules.

Why are umpires sometimes nicknamed 'Blue'?

Because of the colour of their traditional uniform. The name has stuck, and players still shout 'Oh, come on, Blue!' when a call goes against them.

Which song do fans sing during the seventh-inning stretch?

Take Me Out to the Ball Game was written in 1908 by two men who had never been to a game. Chicago announcer Harry Caray made the sing-along famous in the 1970s.

Which Hall of Fame catcher is famous for sayings like 'It ain't over till it's over'?

Yogi Berra. Before the funny sayings and the baseball fame, he was a Navy gunner on a rocket boat off Normandy on D-Day.

Cracker Jack, the ballpark snack, is caramel popcorn mixed with what?

Peanuts. For more than a century every box also hid a little prize, until 2016, when the toy was swapped for a code to download a game.

Which mascot, said to come from the Galápagos Islands, was created for a Pennsylvania ball club in 1978?

The Phillie Phanatic, a furry green creature with a party-horn tongue. The team chose not to buy the rights to him at first, and five years later had to pay $250,000 for them.

Which baseball-headed mascot is thought to be Major League Baseball's first costumed mascot?

Mr. Met started as a cartoon on programme covers in 1963 and became a real costumed mascot when the Mets moved into Shea Stadium in 1964.

Where is the National Baseball Hall of Fame?

Cooperstown, New York, was chosen because of a legend that Abner Doubleday invented baseball there in 1839. Historians say he did not.

Which US president was the first to throw out a ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day, in 1910?

William Howard Taft threw it at the Washington Senators' opening game, and nearly every president since has kept up the tradition at least once.

Little League Baseball was founded in 1939 in which Pennsylvania town?

Williamsport. Carl Stotz started it there as a three-team league, and its World Series is still played every summer next door in South Williamsport.

Who, in 2014, became the first girl to pitch a shutout at the Little League World Series?

Mo'ne Davis did it for Philadelphia's Taney Dragons, and soon became the first Little Leaguer ever put on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

What must every bat used in a Major League game be made of?

Wood. The rules demand one solid piece of it, even though metal bats are allowed in most amateur baseball.

How many games does each Major League team play in a regular season?

162, squeezed into about six months, which is why big-league teams play almost every single day.

In which two states do Major League teams hold spring training?

Arizona and Florida, home of the Cactus League and the Grapefruit League. Pitchers and catchers always report first, because pitchers need longer to get their arms ready.

How many umpires work a regular Major League game?

Four, one near each base. In the playoffs two more join them, standing along the outfield foul lines.

The relief pitchers on a team are known by what name, after the area where they warm up?

The bullpen. From 1950 to 1995 relief pitchers often rode in from it in a little cart or car instead of walking to the mound.

A starting pitcher must complete at least five innings to be credited with what?

A win. Great pitching does not guarantee one: in 1959 Harvey Haddix retired 36 batters in a row and still ended up the losing pitcher.

By 1856, newspapers around New York were already calling baseball America's what?

National pastime. The nickname arrived while the game was still played only by amateur clubs; the first openly professional team, in Cincinnati, did not take the field until 1869.