Cincinnati Reds Trivia
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59 free Cincinnati Reds trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Cincinnati Reds trivia quiz starts with a team thrown out of the National League for selling beer and playing on Sundays, and follows the franchise through the American Association, the tainted 1919 title, the first night game, Vander Meer's back-to-back no-hitters, a 15-year-old pitcher, the Redlegs years and the Frank Robinson trade. Then comes the Big Red Machine: Sparky Anderson, the Great Eight, Bench, Morgan, Pérez and Pete Rose, the 1975 and 1976 titles, and Rose's hit record and ban. The 1990 wire-to-wire champions, the Nasty Boys, Marge Schott and her Saint Bernards, Griffey Jr., Joey Votto, Elly De La Cruz and Terry Francona round it out. The ballparks get their own questions too: Crosley Field, Riverfront Stadium and Rose's collision with Ray Fosse, and Great American Ball Park's steamboat smokestacks, plus the Rosie Reds and the retired numbers. Easy questions suit any Reds fan; the hard ones are for people who know which sportswriter coined 'Big Red Machine'. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The original Cincinnati club was expelled from the National League in 1880 for selling beer and what else?
Playing on Sundays
Playing on Sundays and selling beer drew the city's large German population, and neither broke a league rule yet; the club refused to sign a pledge banning both, so the league expelled it.
Q 02The modern Reds were a charter member of which league in 1882, winning its first pennant?
American Association
American Association clubs sold beer and charged 25 cents, half the older league's price, so rivals sneered at it as the Beer and Whiskey League.
Q 03The Reds' first World Series title, in 1919, came against which team amid a scandal?
Chicago White Sox
Chicago White Sox players took gamblers' money to lose; eight were acquitted in court in August 1921, and the new commissioner banned them for life the next day.
Q 04Which maker of radios and refrigerators bought the struggling Reds in 1934?
Powel Crosley Jr.
Powel Crosley Jr. bought the club in February 1934 and assured fans it would stay in Cincinnati; two months later the ballpark was renamed in his honour.
Q 05Crosley Field hosted the first what in Major League history, in 1935?
Night game
Night game history began when President Roosevelt pressed a button in the White House that switched on the lights in Cincinnati, and the Reds beat the Phillies 2–1.
Q 06Which Reds pitcher remains the only man to throw back-to-back no-hitters, in 1938?
Johnny Vander Meer
Johnny Vander Meer almost let the second one slip: leading 6–0 in Brooklyn, he walked three straight batters to load the bases in the ninth before getting the final outs.
Q 07The Reds beat which team, led by slugger Hank Greenberg, in seven games to win the 1940 World Series?
Detroit Tigers
Detroit Tigers hitters faced an emergency catcher: 40-year-old coach Jimmie Wilson was activated after the backup catcher died and the starter was hurt, caught six games and batted .353.
Q 08Who became the youngest major leaguer ever when he pitched for the Reds in 1944 at age 15?
Joe Nuxhall
He was on loan from a junior high school in Hamilton, Ohio, and later spent decades in the radio booth.
Q 09In 1953 the club asked to be called by what name, to avoid Cold War connotations?
Redlegs
Redlegs was the name from 1953, yet the jerseys kept the word Reds inside the C until 1956, and it was back by 1961.
Q 10Which former MVP did the Reds trade to Baltimore after the 1965 season?
Frank Robinson
Frank Robinson was dismissed by the Reds' owner as old for a 30-year-old, then won the AL Triple Crown and MVP the next season and carried his new club to its first World Series title.
Q 11Cincinnati women formed the Rosie Reds in 1964 to do what?
Stop the owner moving the team
Stop the owner moving the team was the aim when talk spread in 1964 that the Reds would leave; the women called themselves Rooters Organized to Stimulate Interest and Enthusiasm, and men later joined too.
Q 12Which little-known manager took over the Reds for 1970 and led the Big Red Machine to four pennants?
Sparky Anderson
Sparky Anderson was 35 and so obscure that a headline asked 'Sparky Who?'; he won 102 games and the pennant in his first season.
Q 13After Cincinnati stuffed the 1957 All-Star ballot box with Reds, the commissioner responded by doing what?
Q 21Which pitcher's only career no-hitter came as a Red against St. Louis in 1978?
Tom Seaver
Tom Seaver had lost no-hit bids in the ninth inning as a Met, and finally finished one a year after New York traded him away.
Q 22Pete Rose's 44-game hitting streak was the longest since whose record run in 1941?
Joe DiMaggio
Joe DiMaggio's 56 stayed safe when Atlanta's Gene Garber struck Rose out to end it; Rose complained that Garber had pitched as if it were the seventh game of the World Series.
Q 23Whose career hits record did Pete Rose break in September 1985?
Ty Cobb
Ty Cobb's record officially fell on September 11 to a single off San Diego's Eric Show, who sat down on the mound while the celebration held up the game.
Taking the vote from fans
Taking the vote from fans was Ford Frick's answer after a Cincinnati newspaper printed pre-marked ballots; players, coaches and managers chose the starters until fans got the ballot back in 1970.
Q 14Which center fielder joined Cincinnati in the 1971 Houston trade for a Hall of Fame second baseman?
César Gerónimo
César Gerónimo's parents had sent him to a seminary to become a priest; he chose baseball instead and won four straight Gold Gloves in center for the Reds.
Q 15In 1975 the manager moved Pete Rose to which position so George Foster could play left field?
Third base
Third base was a position Rose had little experience at, yet he accepted the move, which opened left field for Foster's bat; the Reds won 108 games.
Q 16Whose RBI single won Game 7 of the 1975 World Series for the Reds?
Joe Morgan
Joe Morgan's ninth-inning single finished a comeback from 3–0 down and gave Cincinnati its first title in 35 years.
Q 17Which Red batted .533 and was named MVP as Cincinnati swept the 1976 World Series?
Johnny Bench
Johnny Bench homered twice and drove in five runs in the clinching game, after which his manager told reporters never to embarrass another catcher by comparing him to Bench.
Q 18As of 2025, the Reds have not lost a World Series game since which moment?
Carlton Fisk's foul-pole homer
Carlton Fisk's foul-pole homer won Game 6 of 1975 in the 12th inning; Cincinnati took Game 7 the next night and then swept its next two World Series, nine wins in a row.
Q 19The 1973 Reds trailed which team by 11 games at the start of July before winning the division?
Los Angeles Dodgers
Los Angeles Dodgers led by 11 when reserve catcher Hal King, down to his last strike, hit a three-run pinch homer to beat them on July 1; the Reds went 60–26 from there.
Q 20Which slugger tied Babe Ruth's career home run record against the Reds on Opening Day 1974?
Hank Aaron
Hank Aaron hit number 714 off Jack Billingham in his first at-bat of the season; Atlanta had wanted to sit him out in Cincinnati so the record would fall at home, but the league made him play.
Q 24Which commissioner banned Pete Rose from baseball in 1989 following the Dowd Report?
Bart Giamatti
Bart Giamatti, a former president of Yale, announced the lifetime ban in August 1989 and died of a heart attack barely a week later, aged 51.
Q 25Who mockingly gave the young Pete Rose his nickname 'Charlie Hustle' during a spring training game?
Whitey Ford
Whitey Ford meant it as a jibe, in most tellings after Rose sprinted to first base on a walk; Rose adopted the insult as a badge of honour and made it his trademark.
Q 26Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench was raised in which state?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma raised him in tiny Binger, where he was valedictorian of his high school class and his father told him catching was the quickest route to the majors.
Q 27The Reds left Crosley Field in June 1970 for which new stadium?
Riverfront
Riverfront hosted the All-Star Game just two weeks after it opened, and in December 2002 it was brought down by implosion beside the new ballpark that replaced it.
Q 28The 1970 All-Star Game is remembered for Pete Rose's collision with which catcher?
Ray Fosse
Ray Fosse's X-rays showed nothing that night, so he kept playing; only the following year did doctors find that his shoulder had been fractured and separated.
Q 29Which Hall of Fame reliever retired in 1986 rather than shave his handlebar mustache to join the Reds?
Rollie Fingers
Rollie Fingers had grown it in 1972 to win a cash prize that Oakland's owner offered for the team's best facial hair, and it became his trademark.
Q 30Which Reds pitcher threw a perfect game in 1988?
Tom Browning
Tom Browning nearly did it twice: the next July he retired the first 24 Phillies he faced before a leadoff double in the ninth ended his bid for a second perfect game.