College Baseball
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free College Baseball trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
College baseball has its own sound, its own calendar and its own capital. Every June the season funnels toward Omaha, Nebraska, where eight teams settle the national title in front of crowds that treat the College World Series like a two-week festival. This quiz covers the whole game: how the tournament works, the ballparks and traditions fans swear by, the coaches who built dynasties, and the oddities that only happen on campus, from marathon games to underdogs who went all the way. It also follows the famous names who passed through college dugouts before they reached the majors, the NFL or even the White House. The questions start friendly and get tougher, so they suit casual fans warming up for the postseason as well as diehards who plan their summers around the bracket. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which future US president played first base for Yale in the first two College World Series?
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush was Yale's captain, and he was waiting on deck when California recorded the final out of the 1947 series.
Q 02Which four-sport UCLA letterman hit just .097 in one college baseball season before reaching the Hall of Fame?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson was better known at UCLA for football, yet in his first baseball game there he went 4-for-4 and stole home twice.
Q 03Unlike wood-only pro leagues, college baseball hitters since the mid-1970s mostly swing bats made of which metal?
Aluminum
Aluminum bats send the ball off faster than wood, so in 2011 the NCAA tightened its bat rules to make metal perform more like timber.
Q 04Which Hall of Fame hitter coached San Diego State's baseball team for 12 seasons in a ballpark named after him?
Tony Gwynn
Tony Gwynn went back to his alma mater and coached future No. 1 draft pick Stephen Strasburg. On his own draft day in 1981, both the Padres and the NBA's Clippers selected him.
Q 05Which Oklahoma Sooner did the Oakland Athletics draft ninth overall in 2018, months before he won the Heisman Trophy?
Kyler Murray
Kyler Murray took a $4.66 million signing bonus from Oakland, then chose the NFL anyway, becoming the first player drafted in the first round of both sports.
Q 06Which future Yankees great pitched and played first base for Columbia before signing a pro contract in 1923?
Lou Gehrig
Lou Gehrig also played fullback for Columbia's football team, and left for the Yankees after two years of engineering classes.
Q 07Coastal Carolina, 2016 national champion, takes which nickname from a rooster in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?
Chanticleers
Chanticleers was picked when the school was an extension of the University of South Carolina, to sit alongside the parent campus's own fighting bird.
Q 08Which pitcher transferred from Air Force to LSU, won the 2023 national title, then went first overall in the MLB draft?
Paul Skenes
Paul Skenes and LSU outfielder Dylan Crews went first and second in 2023, the first college teammates ever taken with the top two picks.
Q 09Which Richard Linklater comedy follows the lives of Texas college baseball players in the fall of 1980?
Everybody Wants Some!!
Everybody Wants Some!! draws on Linklater's own experiences at Sam Houston State in Texas, and the director has called it a spiritual sequel to Boyhood.
Q 10Which Minnesota pitcher was named 1973 College World Series MVP, then drafted by four teams in three different sports?
Dave Winfield
Dave Winfield was even picked by the NFL's Minnesota Vikings, though he never played a down of college football.
Q 11Which ballpark hosted the College World Series from 1950 through 2010 before its site became a zoo parking lot?
Rosenblatt Stadium
Rosenblatt Stadium was bought by the neighboring Henry Doorly Zoo and torn down by 2013, though a mini-ballpark memorial marks the spot where it stood.
Q 12Which USC coach won 11 national titles, including five straight, and later coached the actors in Field of Dreams?
Rod Dedeaux
Rod Dedeaux took a salary of just $1 a year from USC because his trucking business paid the bills, and in 1999 he was named Coach of the Century.
Q 13Which award, created by USA Baseball in 1978, goes each year to the best amateur baseball player in the United States?
Golden Spikes
Q 21The first two College World Series, in 1947 and 1948, were played in which Michigan city before the event moved west?
Kalamazoo
Kalamazoo staged the event at Hyames Field before it spent 1949 in Wichita, Kansas, and settled in Omaha the year after.
Q 22Which best-of-three round, added in 1999, sends its eight winners on to the College World Series in Omaha?
Super regionals
Super regionals arrived when the field grew to 64 teams. Each one pairs two first-round winners, usually at the home park of the higher seed.
Q 23Each four-team regional in the NCAA baseball tournament, like both brackets in Omaha, is played under which format?
Double elimination
Golden Spikes Award winners include Bob Horner, who took the first one in 1978, went first overall in the draft and was MLB's Rookie of the Year the same season.
Q 14Which Michigan pitcher, born without a right hand, became the first baseball player to win the Sullivan Award in 1987?
Jim Abbott
Jim Abbott pitched the final game as the United States won the 1988 Olympic baseball tournament, then threw a no-hitter for the Yankees against Cleveland in 1993.
Q 15Which Florida State catcher, later a Giants MVP, played all nine positions and hit a grand slam in one 2008 game?
Buster Posey
Buster Posey struck out both batters he faced as a pitcher that day, in a 10–0 win over Savannah State.
Q 16Which future 70-home-run slugger played at USC as a teammate of pitcher Randy Johnson before the 1984 Olympics?
Mark McGwire
Mark McGwire was The Sporting News college player of the year in 1984, and the Oakland Athletics drafted him tenth overall that summer.
Q 17Which future seven-time Cy Young winner was on the mound when Texas won the 1983 College World Series?
Roger Clemens
Roger Clemens went 25–7 in two All-American seasons and became the first player to have his baseball number retired by the University of Texas.
Q 18Which coach won national titles at both Cal State Fullerton and Texas, and once cut Kevin Costner from his team?
Augie Garrido
Augie Garrido stayed friends with Costner, who later cast him as the New York Yankees manager in the film For Love of the Game.
Q 19Which school's Dudy Noble Field is known for the Left Field Lounge, the fan area beyond the outfield fence?
Mississippi State
Mississippi State alumnus John Grisham wrote about his days in the Left Field Lounge for a book on the ballpark, and ESPN Magazine once called the lounge the country's best tailgating experience.
Q 20Long Beach State's baseball team took which nickname from the rough Pony League field where the 1989 squad practiced?
Dirtbags
Dirtbags is used only for baseball, since every other Long Beach State team is officially known as the Beach.
Double elimination alternates with best-of-three series all the way through, so a team can lose four games in total and still be crowned champion.
Q 24Top college players spend their summers swinging wood bats in which showcase, the setting of the film Summer Catch?
Cape Cod League
The Cape Cod League counts more than 1,000 former players who went on to the majors, and for a time it was the only college summer league that had given up metal bats.
Q 25Skip Bertman's 1997 LSU Tigers, who hit 188 home runs in 70 games, earned which nickname for their slugging style?
Gorilla ball
Gorilla ball summed up an era when juiced metal bats sent balls flying out of parks, and the 1997 Tigers rode it to a second straight national title.
Q 26Which school won the 2008 College World Series as a No. 4 regional seed, the lowest seed ever to take the title?
Fresno State
Fresno State beat Georgia in the final. A No. 4 regional seed is roughly the equal of a 13 seed or lower in the NCAA basketball tournament.
Q 27Which SEC school went from the last team admitted to the 2022 NCAA tournament field to national champion?
Ole Miss
Ole Miss had never even reached the championship series before, then swept Oklahoma in two games to complete its last-to-first run.
Q 28Which SEC school was one out from the 2018 national title when a foul pop-up dropped between three fielders?
Arkansas
Arkansas led 3–2 with two outs in the ninth when the ball fell between three Razorbacks. Oregon State rallied to win that game and then the deciding one.
Q 29Which Yankees slugger turned down offers to play tight end at Notre Dame and UCLA to concentrate on college baseball?
Aaron Judge
Aaron Judge preferred baseball, and after his college career in California the Yankees took him with the 32nd pick of the 2013 draft.
Q 30Which Michigan State All-American wide receiver played just one season of college baseball before a long MLB career?
Kirk Gibson
Kirk Gibson only tried the sport at the suggestion of his football coach, then batted .390 with 16 home runs in 48 games.