Baseball Movie Trivia
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This baseball movie trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the films that made the sport a genre of its own. It runs from The Pride of the Yankees and Damn Yankees through the great late-1980s run of Bull Durham, Eight Men Out, Major League and Field of Dreams, on to A League of Their Own, The Sandlot, Rookie of the Year and the true-story era of The Rookie, Moneyball and 42. Expect questions about who played whom, which real ballparks stood in for Ebbets Field or Yankee Stadium, the novels behind The Natural and Bang the Drum Slowly, altered endings, box-office records, and the details only a repeat viewer would catch, like Charlie Sheen's actual fastball or which opera hides in The Bad News Bears score. About a third are easy warm-ups; the rest climb toward genuine deep cuts. Every answer has been checked against the film's Wikipedia entry and the sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote the novel Shoeless Joe, adapted for the screen as Field of Dreams (1989)?
W. P. Kinsella
W. P. Kinsella wanted to call his novel The Dream Field, but his publisher preferred Shoeless Joe; the studio then dropped that title for the film and landed close to his first choice.
Q 02The cornfield ballpark in Field of Dreams was built on a farm outside which town?
Dyersville
Dyersville's corn stood far too short when cameras were due to roll in the dry summer of 1988, so the shoot had to work around it until the stalks grew.
Q 03In the novel Shoeless Joe, which real reclusive writer does Ray seek out, changed to Terence Mann in Field of Dreams?
J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger's lawyers wrote that he was offended by the novel and would be unhappy to see it reach other media, so the filmmakers invented a 1960s writer instead.
Q 04Which Hollywood legend's last big-screen role was Doc 'Moonlight' Graham in Field of Dreams?
Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster's character was a real man: Archibald Graham played his one big-league game in June 1905, not on the last day of the 1922 season as the film has it.
Q 05Which two teams played MLB's first regular-season game at the Field of Dreams site in 2021?
White Sox and Yankees
White Sox and Yankees hitters sent eight home runs into the corn, the last a walk-off by Chicago's Tim Anderson; the pandemic had pushed the game back a year.
Q 06What is the nickname of Tim Robbins's wild young pitcher in Bull Durham?
Nuke
Nuke is the name Annie gives Ebby Calvin LaLoosh after tying him to her bed and reading him Walt Whitman, and his teammates soon pick it up.
Q 07After leaving the Bulls, Crash Davis breaks the minor league home run record playing for which team?
Asheville Tourists
Asheville Tourists are a real club, and Crash's name came from a real 1940s Durham Bull, who later befriended director Ron Shelton and got a small part in his film Cobb.
Q 08Major League (1989) is about Cleveland, but most ballpark scenes were shot in which city?
Milwaukee
Milwaukee's County Stadium doubled for Cleveland Stadium, in part because the producers could not find a free window around the Indians' and Browns' schedules.
Q 09Which real broadcaster plays boozy announcer Harry Doyle in Major League?
Bob Uecker
Bob Uecker hit just .200 across six big-league seasons, then joked about it on The Tonight Show so often that Johnny Carson dubbed him Mr. Baseball.
Q 10Which Major League star later said he took steroids to speed up his fastball for the role?
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen said six or eight weeks of steroids lifted his fastball from 79 mph to about 85, still far short of the 101 mph Ricky Vaughn reaches in the film.
Q 11The Natural (1984) is based on a 1952 novel by which author?
Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud ended his novel darkly, with Roy Hobbs striking out and facing disgrace; the film traded that for the home run into the lights.
Q 12What is the name of the bat Roy Hobbs carves from a lightning-struck tree in The Natural?
Wonderboy
Wonderboy splits on a foul ball in the last game, so Roy hits the pennant-winning homer with the Savoy Special, a bat he had helped the batboy make.
Q 13Most of The Natural was shot in which city, using its old War Memorial Stadium?
Buffalo
Buffalo supplied a second ballpark too: the city's All-High Stadium stood in for Chicago's Wrigley Field.
Q 21Which actor plays Scott Hatteberg, whose walk-off homer wins Oakland's 20th straight game in Moneyball?
Chris Pratt
Chris Pratt was told at his first audition that he was too heavy for the part, so he spent months shedding 30 pounds and came back to win it.
Q 22Who plays Dodgers executive Branch Rickey opposite Chadwick Boseman in 42 (2013)?
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford hid under a fat suit and facial prosthetics as Rickey because his director wanted a character actor, not a star audiences would recognize at once.
Q 23In 42 (2013), Chattanooga's old Engel Stadium stood in for which long-demolished Brooklyn ballpark?
Ebbets Field
Q 14Who directed A League of Their Own (1992)?
Penny Marshall
Penny Marshall came to the story through a television documentary of the same name, and its two makers, Kelly Candaele and Kim Wilson, earned the film's story credit.
Q 15Which team do sisters Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller join at the start of A League of Their Own?
Rockford Peaches
Rockford Peaches lose the final when Kit, traded away to Racine, crashes into her sister at the plate and knocks the ball loose to score the winning run.
Q 16The championship game in A League of Their Own was filmed at Bosse Field, a 1915 ballpark in which city?
Evansville, Indiana
Evansville, Indiana supplied the rival team's home park for the final, while the heroines' own field was rebuilt in Huntingburg, Indiana, sturdily enough for the town to keep using it.
Q 17What is the nickname of Madonna's center fielder Mae Mordabito in A League of Their Own?
'All the Way' Mae
'All the Way' Mae's actress also sang the end-credits ballad, yet her own record label kept it off the film's soundtrack album and put it on an Olympics compilation instead.
Q 18What breed of dog is 'the Beast' in The Sandlot?
English Mastiff
English Mastiff Hercules turns out to be no monster: when the fence falls on him, Smalls pulls him free and gets his face licked in thanks.
Q 19Moneyball (2011) is based on a 2003 book by which author?
Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis's book almost stalled on screen: Sony shut down Steven Soderbergh's semi-documentary version just before shooting in 2009, then restarted with a new director.
Q 20Jonah Hill's character Peter Brand in Moneyball is a fictionalized version of which real A's executive?
Paul DePodesta
Paul DePodesta read the script, judged it a piece of fiction and refused to let the film use his name, so his job went to an invented Yale economics graduate.
Ebbets Field was laid over the rundown Tennessee park by shifting the infield and ringing the outfield with a 1,200-foot green screen, so the Brooklyn stands could be painted in digitally.
Q 24In The Rookie (2002), high school coach Jim Morris ends up pitching for which MLB team?
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Tampa Bay Devil Rays scouts clocked the 35-year-old at 98 mph at a tryout he attended only because he had promised his high school players he would go if they won their district.
Q 25Which independent filmmaker wrote and directed Eight Men Out (1988), about the 1919 Black Sox scandal?
John Sayles
John Sayles cast himself as sportswriter Ring Lardner and put oral historian Studs Terkel beside him as Hugh Fullerton, the two reporters who smell the fix.
Q 26Which actor plays White Sox third baseman Buck Weaver in Eight Men Out (1988)?
John Cusack
John Cusack's Buck Weaver turns down the gamblers and hits .324 in the Series, yet the real Weaver was banned for life with the other seven for knowing of the fix and keeping quiet.
Q 27Which actor plays Shoeless Joe Jackson in Eight Men Out?
D. B. Sweeney
D. B. Sweeney, a natural right-hander, spent part of the summer before filming suited up with a farm club in Kenosha, Wisconsin, learning to hit left-handed as Jackson did.
Q 28In Eight Men Out, Indianapolis's Bush Stadium stood in for which Chicago White Sox home?
Comiskey Park
Comiskey Park was played by Bush Stadium, which later became a failed dirt speedway and a lot for cash-for-clunkers trade-ins before escaping demolition as loft apartments.
Q 29Who plays Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees (1942)?
Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper said he had never played baseball, so former batting champion Lefty O'Doul had the right-handed star chopping wood left-handed to pass for the southpaw Gehrig.
Q 30The Pride of the Yankees earned eleven Oscar nominations but won only one, in which category?
Best Film Editing
Best Film Editing went to Daniel Mandell; legend says the whole film was flipped to make its right-handed star a lefty, but only one minor-league throwing scene was reversed.