Pittsburgh Sports Trivia
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50 free Pittsburgh Sports trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free Pittsburgh sports trivia questions with answers. Pittsburgh sports trivia for the city where every team wears black and gold. The Pirates round covers Honus Wagner, the 1909 and 1960 champions, Mazeroski's walk-off, Clemente's 3,000th hit and final flight, Willie Stargell's 1979 'We Are Family' season and the 20 straight losing years that followed. The Penguins round runs from the 1967 expansion draft and the Igloo to Lemieux, Jagr, Crosby and five Stanley Cups. The Steelers get their share too - the Immaculate Reception, the Terrible Towel and the Rooney era - and Pitt gets Pop Warner, Dorsett and Marino. There is plenty from the deeper history as well: the first paid football player in 1892, the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords of the Negro leagues, Josh Gibson, the NHL's original Pittsburgh Pirates, the ABA-champion Pipers, Forbes Field, Three Rivers, PNC Park and Arnold Palmer of Latrobe. Easy questions come first; the later ones will test a lifelong season-ticket holder. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What colours do Pittsburgh's Steelers, Pirates and Penguins all share?
Black and gold
Black and gold come from the city flag, based on William Pitt's coat of arms. The Penguins switched last, in 1980, beating a Boston Bruins protest by citing the city's black-and-gold NHL team of the 1920s.
Q 02After the Pirates and Steelers both won titles in 1979, Pittsburgh took which nickname?
City of Champions
City of Champions: the Steelers won Super Bowls in January 1979 and January 1980, and in between the Pirates came back from three games to one down to beat Baltimore in the World Series.
Q 03An 1892 game between two Pittsburgh athletic clubs is remembered as American football's first what?
Professional game
Professional game: Allegheny secretly paid Yale star Pudge Heffelfinger $500, and he scored the only touchdown. Proof surfaced some 80 years later, in a club expense sheet obtained by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Q 04Why did a rival league brand Pittsburgh's ball club 'piratical' in 1891, giving the Pirates their name?
Signing a player a rival claimed
Signing a player a rival claimed: the Athletics left second baseman Lou Bierbauer off their reserve list, Pittsburgh pounced, and the club embraced the insult as its new name.
Q 05Which Steelers star tossed his jersey to a young fan in a famous 1979 Coca-Cola commercial?
Joe Greene
Joe Greene, the feared tackle known as 'Mean Joe', had to drain a bottle on every take and kept belching, so the one-minute ad took three days to film. He said children stopped being afraid of him.
Q 06A T206 baseball card of which Pirates star sold for $6.6 million in 2021?
Honus Wagner
Honus Wagner made the American Tobacco Company stop printing his card, so only about 50 are known. Whether he objected to selling cigarettes to children or simply wanted to be paid is still argued.
Q 07Forbes Field, opened in 1909, was the National League's first ballpark built from which materials?
Concrete and steel
Concrete and steel, chosen to outlast wooden parks. Critics called the site by Schenley Park 'Dreyfuss's Folly' because it was a trolley ride from downtown, until the city grew out to meet it.
Q 08Bill Mazeroski's 1960 World Series home run remains the only one ever to do what?
End Game 7 as a walk-off
End Game 7 as a walk-off: his ninth-inning shot won it 10-9, even though the Yankees had outscored Pittsburgh 55-27 across the Series.
Q 09Roberto Clemente won 12 straight Gold Gloves at which position?
Right field
Right field. Brooklyn signed Clemente first but left him off its big-league roster, so Pittsburgh drafted him away in 1954, and he won a Gold Glove in each of his final 12 seasons.
Q 10Roberto Clemente died in a 1972 plane crash while delivering earthquake relief to which country?
Nicaragua
Nicaragua. Clemente had organised relief flights from Puerto Rico after the Managua earthquake, and boarded this one himself after hearing that the army had stolen earlier supplies.
Q 11What was historic about the starting lineup the Pirates fielded on September 1, 1971?
All nine were Black or Latino
All nine were Black or Latino, a first in the majors. Manager Danny Murtaugh may not have realised as he wrote it out, and the players only noticed once the game was under way.
Q 12Which Pirates pitcher later said he threw his 1970 no-hitter against San Diego while on LSD?
Dock Ellis
Dock Ellis said he lost track of a day at a friend's place in Los Angeles and was woken four hours before the first pitch. He flew down, walked eight batters and still won 2-0.
Q 13The Pirates' record run of 20 losing seasons began after a 1992 playoff loss to which team?
Atlanta Braves
Q 21The Civic Arena, built in 1961, was the world's first major sports venue with what feature?
A retractable roof
A retractable roof, because the arena was built for the Civic Light Opera's open-air summer shows. A hanging scoreboard and the cost of repairs later kept it shut, and the roof last opened fully in 1995.
Q 22Who was the Penguins' 2009 playoff MVP?
Evgeni Malkin
Evgeni Malkin led the 2009 playoffs with 36 points and became the first Russian to win the Conn Smythe Trophy, then nearly left it behind in Detroit: Sidney Crosby had to shout after him as he boarded the flight home.
Q 23Mario Lemieux is the only man whose name is on the Stanley Cup in which two roles?
The Atlanta Braves won Game 7 in the ninth when Sid Bream, a former Pirate, slid home just ahead of Barry Bonds's throw. Bonds left that winter, and Pittsburgh's next winning season came in 2013.
Q 14Whose statue was unveiled outside PNC Park on April 7, 2001, two days before he died?
Willie Stargell
Willie Stargell was too ill to attend, and died on the morning the Pirates played their first game at the new park. Fans arriving for the opener laid flowers at the statue's base.
Q 15Three Rivers Stadium was named for the spot where the Allegheny and Monongahela meet to form which river?
The Ohio
The Ohio. The stadium was a homecoming as much as a move: it brought the Pirates back to the North Shore, where they had played at Exposition Park until leaving for Forbes Field in 1909.
Q 16Which Negro league team, started by Black steelworkers near Pittsburgh, won the 1948 Negro World Series?
The Homestead Grays
The Homestead Grays drew so well on visits to Washington's Griffith Stadium that by 1943 they played most home games there, which is why some records call them the Washington Grays.
Q 17Which star pitcher did numbers boss Gus Greenlee sign for his Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1931?
Satchel Paige
Satchel Paige started the first game at Greenlee Field, the $100,000 park Greenlee built for the team in 1932. He struck out 10 New York Black Yankees and still lost 1-0.
Q 18Which Pittsburgh catcher became MLB's career batting average leader when Negro league stats were integrated in 2024?
Josh Gibson
Josh Gibson passed Ty Cobb, yet he never got the chance to play in the white majors. He died at 35 in January 1947, three months before Jackie Robinson's debut.
Q 19With rosters thinned by World War II, the Steelers merged for the 1943 season with which team?
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles. The 'Steagles' went 5-4-1 while players worked war-plant jobs, and co-coaches Greasy Neale and Walt Kiesling disliked each other so much that one took the offence and the other the defence.
Q 20The Penguins' name was chosen partly because their home, the Civic Arena, carried what nickname?
The Igloo
The Igloo. Co-owner Jack McGregor's wife Carol heard the arena's nickname and thought of penguins, and the owners' pick seems to have leaked: 700 of 26,000 contest entries suggested the same name.
Player and owner
Player and owner: the bankrupt Penguins owed him years of deferred salary, so in 1999 he turned the debt into a stake and bought the club. Pittsburgh then won the Cup in 2009, 2016 and 2017.
Q 24Which illness was Mario Lemieux diagnosed with in January 1993, in a season he still finished as NHL scoring champion?
Hodgkin's lymphoma
Hodgkin's lymphoma. Lemieux missed two months for radiation and came back 12 points behind in the scoring race, yet still took the title with 160 points in only 60 games.
Q 25Sidney Crosby wears number 87 and signed a 2007 deal worth $8.7 million a year, both a nod to what?
His birthdate
His birthdate, 8/7/87. League rules would have let Crosby ask for more, so the symbolic salary also left Pittsburgh room to keep its other young stars.
Q 26When the Penguins beat Detroit in 2009, Sidney Crosby set what NHL record?
Youngest captain to win the Stanley Cup
Youngest captain to win the Stanley Cup, at 21. Pittsburgh had lost the 2008 Final to the same Red Wings, and Crosby spent most of Game 7's last period on the bench with a knee injury.
Q 27Which Penguins winger, picked fifth in 1990, was the first Czechoslovak player drafted by the NHL without having to defect?
Jaromír Jágr
Jaromír Jágr wore 68 for the Prague Spring of 1968, the year his grandfather, once jailed for defying the Communists, died. Penguins fans soon noticed that 'Jaromir' rearranges into 'Mario Jr.'
Q 28PPG Paints Arena opened in 2010 under what original name?
Consol Energy Center
Consol Energy Center, after a coal producer that gave up the rights in 2016 when energy prices slumped. Paint maker PPG took over, and fans promptly christened the building 'The Paint Can'.
Q 29A fan phoned which Pittsburgh broadcaster with the name 'Immaculate Reception'?
Myron Cope
Myron Cope used it on air that night after Sharon Levosky rang him. Her boyfriend Michael Ord had coined the pun in a bar after the game, and the couple never sought credit for it.
Q 30Which Steelers running back caught the Immaculate Reception and ran it in for the winning touchdown?
Franco Harris
Franco Harris scooped the deflection at his shoe tops. Under 1972 rules two Steelers could not touch a pass in a row, so the touchdown counted only if Oakland's Jack Tatum had touched the ball, and whether he did is still argued.