Chicago Cubs
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7correct to beat the crowd
This Chicago Cubs trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and runs from the 1870 White Stockings to the 2016 champions: Cap Anson, the 116-win 1906 team, Tinker to Evers to Chance, Weeghman Park becoming Wrigley Field, the ivy and the lights, Babe Ruth's called shot, the Billy Goat, Ernie Banks, the collapse of 1969, the Sandberg Game, Harry Caray's seventh-inning stretch, Sosa and Kerry Wood, Bartman, Theo Epstein's rebuild, and the Game 7 rain delay in Cleveland. The first questions are easy enough for anyone who has sat in the bleachers once; the last ones will test people who can name the goat. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer, so it works as a solo challenge or a ready-made round for a Wrigleyville bar quiz. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Wrigley family, whose name is on the Cubs' ballpark, made its fortune selling what?
Chewing gum
Chewing gum began as William Wrigley Jr.'s free gift. He sold soap, then baking powder, and handed out gum as a bonus until customers wanted the gum more than the goods.
Q 02Before they were the Cubs, what was the franchise called when it was founded in 1870?
The White Stockings
The White Stockings name outlived its first owners. When Charles Comiskey brought a rival club to the city in 1900, he took the discarded name for his own team.
Q 03A Chicago newspaper coined 'Cubs' in 1902 as a nod to the team's what?
Young players
Young players earned the name. New manager Frank Selee had filled the roster with youngsters, and the Chicago Daily News started calling them the Cubs.
Q 04Who was the first player credited with 3,000 hits and player-manager of the Cubs' 19th-century pennant winners?
Cap Anson
Cap Anson was the biggest celebrity in the game. In 1895 he played himself on Broadway in a play written to cash in on his fame.
Q 05Which team in 2001 matched the 1906 Cubs' record of 116 wins in a season?
Seattle Mariners
Seattle Mariners. Neither 116-win team took the title: the 1906 Cubs were upset in the World Series by a club nicknamed the Hitless Wonders, and Seattle fell to the Yankees in the playoffs.
Q 06Which team did the Cubs beat in both the 1907 and 1908 World Series?
Detroit Tigers
Detroit Tigers. Their 20-year-old star Ty Cobb had just won his first batting title, but Cubs pitchers held him to a .200 average in 1907 and Chicago never lost a game.
Q 07A 1910 poem made the Cubs' Tinker, Evers and Chance famous for which feat?
Turning double plays
Turning double plays. The poem was a rival's lament: New York columnist Franklin P. Adams wrote it as a Giants fan and called 'Tinker to Evers to Chance' the saddest of possible words.
Q 08Wrigley Field opened in 1914 under what name, built for a Federal League team?
Weeghman Park
Weeghman Park was named for Charles Weeghman, who got rich on quick-lunch counters. When the Federal League folded he bought the Cubs and moved them into his two-year-old ballpark.
Q 09Which ballpark is the only one in the majors older than Wrigley Field?
Fenway Park
Fenway Park opened in Boston in April 1912, two years before the Cubs' future home. Its famous left-field wall, the Green Monster, was not painted green until 1947.
Q 10Who planted the famous ivy on Wrigley Field's outfield walls in 1937?
Bill Veeck
Bill Veeck, then a young Cubs employee, became baseball's great showman as a team owner. In 1951 he sent 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel up to bat as a stunt.
Q 11Wrigley Field's long-awaited first night game, on 8/8/88, was cut short by what?
Heavy rain
Heavy rain stopped play after three and a half innings, so the game never counted. The first official night game at Wrigley was played the following evening.
Q 12The Cubs bought lights for Wrigley Field decades early, then gave them away after which event?
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor was attacked just after owner P.K. Wrigley had bought lights for the 1942 season. He gave the equipment to the war effort, and the park stayed dark for another 46 years.
Q 13Which NFL team shared Wrigley Field with the Cubs from 1921 to 1970?
Chicago Bears
Q 21Ernie Banks holds the MLB record for most games played without ever doing what?
Appearing in the postseason
Appearing in the postseason eluded Banks through all 2,528 of his games, every one of them for the Cubs. He came closest in 1969, when Chicago fell out of first place late in the season.
Q 22Which catchphrase is 'Mr. Cub' Ernie Banks best remembered for?
'Let's play two!'
'Let's play two!' meant a doubleheader, because one game a day was never enough for him. Banks even closed his Hall of Fame induction speech with the line in 1977.
Q 23Ernie Banks hit a record five of which in 1955?
Grand slams
The Chicago Bears squeezed a football field into the ballpark every autumn, with the brick outfield wall standing just inches behind one end zone.
Q 14At Wrigley Field, a fly ball that drops into 'the Basket' atop the outfield wall is ruled what?
A home run
A home run, because the basket hangs out over the field. The Cubs put the wire screen up in 1970 after rowdy bleacher fans leaped over the wall and onto the grass.
Q 15The 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field is remembered for which Yankees moment?
Babe Ruth's 'called shot'
Babe Ruth's 'called shot' is still argued over. Film shows him gesturing before he homered, but Cubs pitcher Charlie Root always insisted that Ruth never called it.
Q 16Which Cubs slugger drove in 191 runs in 1930 to set a major-league record?
Hack Wilson
Hack Wilson, a 5-foot-6 outfielder, was credited with 190 for 69 years. In 1999 researchers found a run wrongly given to a teammate, and baseball raised his record to 191.
Q 17Which animal was turned away from the 1945 World Series, starting the Cubs' famous curse?
Goat
The goat, tavern owner William Sianis's pet Murphy, was turned away from Game 4 with the Cubs leading two games to one. Sianis is said to have cursed them, and they lost in seven and waited 71 years for another World Series.
Q 18Which Cubs Hall of Famer was traded to the Cardinals for Ernie Broglio in 1964?
Lou Brock
Lou Brock helped St. Louis win the World Series that same October and went on to the Hall of Fame, while Broglio won only seven more games in his career.
Q 19'Mr. Cub' Ernie Banks began his professional career in 1950 with which Negro leagues team?
Kansas City Monarchs
The Kansas City Monarchs sold him to the Cubs in September 1953, and Banks reported straight to Wrigley Field without spending a day in the minor leagues.
Q 20Ernie Banks, later a first baseman, was the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1958 and 1959 at which position?
Shortstop
Shortstop. Banks hit 47 and 45 home runs in those seasons and became the first National Leaguer named MVP two years running, even though the Cubs had a losing record both times.
Grand slams. Not bad for a boy who had so little interest in baseball that his father bribed him with nickels and dimes just to play catch.
Q 24Which team overtook the Cubs to win the NL East in the infamous collapse of 1969?
New York Mets
The New York Mets were still chasing the Cubs at the start of September, then stormed past them and won the division by eight games.
Q 25Third baseman Ron Santo became known in 1969 for what celebration after home wins?
Clicking his heels
Clicking his heels began by accident after a dramatic win, and the bleacher fans loved it. Santo dropped the routine for good when the Cubs collapsed that September.
Q 26In 1971 Fergie Jenkins became the first pitcher from which country to win the Cy Young Award?
Canada
Canada. Jenkins, from Chatham, Ontario, was a fine all-round athlete who spent his winters in the late 1960s touring with basketball's Harlem Globetrotters.
Q 27Which song did Harry Caray famously lead Wrigley crowds in during the seventh-inning stretch?
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Take Me Out to the Ball Game caught on because Caray sang it badly. The owner who first put his voice on the loudspeakers said fans would join in once they knew they could sing better than he could.
Q 28Before joining the Cubs in 1982, Harry Caray had spent 11 years broadcasting for which team?
Chicago White Sox
Chicago White Sox. Caray became a South Side favourite there, sometimes calling games from a seat among the fans in the bleachers, a habit he later took with him to Wrigley Field.
Q 29Ryne Sandberg's 1984 'Sandberg Game' featured two game-tying homers off which Cardinals closer?
Bruce Sutter
Bruce Sutter was one of the game's dominant closers and a former Cub. Chicago had traded him to St. Louis in 1980 in the deal that brought Leon Durham the other way.
Q 30Ryne Sandberg came to the Cubs in a 1982 trade with which team, packaged with Larry Bowa?
Philadelphia Phillies
The Philadelphia Phillies gave up a prospect their old scouting chief knew well. Dallas Green had drafted Sandberg in the 20th round, and once he was running the Cubs he brought him to Chicago in the Bowa trade.