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 all of Pittsburgh's major pro teams uniquely share?
Black and gold
The Penguins were the last to switch, in 1979, over objections from the Boston Bruins, who had used the combination since 1935.
Q 02Pittsburgh became the 'City of Champions' after the Pirates, Pitt and Steelers won titles in which decade?
The 1970s
In 1979 alone the Pirates won the World Series and the Steelers won the Super Bowl.
Q 03Who became the first known professional football player when paid $500 for a game in 1892?
Pudge Heffelfinger
He scored the game's only points in a 4-0 win over the Pittsburgh Athletic Club at Recreation Park.
Q 04The Pirates got their name after a rival league called their 1891 signing of Lou Bierbauer what?
Piratical
The club had been the Alleghenys since 1881, and did not switch to black and gold until 1948.
Q 05Which Pittsburgh native, 'the Flying Dutchman', was among the first five Baseball Hall of Fame inductees?
Honus Wagner
He was born in Chartiers, now Carnegie, and left school at 12 to work in the coal mines with his father and brothers.
Q 06A T206 baseball card of which Pirates star sold for $6.6 million in 2021?
Honus Wagner
He won a joint-record eight National League batting titles and retired holding the career hits record later broken by Ty Cobb.
Q 07Forbes Field, opened in 1909, was the National League's first ballpark built from which materials?
Concrete and steel
Owner Barney Dreyfuss bought the land near Schenley Park with help from Andrew Carnegie, and critics dubbed the distant site 'Dreyfuss's Folly'.
Q 08Bill Mazeroski's 1960 World Series home run remains the only one ever to do what?
End Game 7 as a walk-off
It beat the heavily favoured Yankees; fans still gather at the remnants of the Forbes Field wall every October 13 to relive it.
Q 09How many Gold Gloves did Roberto Clemente win, in consecutive seasons from 1961 to 1972?
12
He finished his career with exactly 3,000 hits; the last came in his final regular-season at-bat.
Q 10Clemente died in a 1972 crash while delivering earthquake relief to which country?
Nicaragua
The Hall of Fame changed its rules to admit him in 1973, making him the first Latino and Caribbean inductee.
Q 11On September 1, 1971, the Pirates became the first MLB team to do what?
Field an all-Black and Latino starting lineup
That same team went on to beat Baltimore in the World Series behind Clemente, the Series MVP.
Q 12Which Pirates slugger nicknamed 'Pops' is the only man to win NL MVP, NLCS MVP and World Series MVP in one season?
Willie Stargell
He hit 296 home runs in the 1970s, more than anyone else that decade, and seven of the 18 balls ever hit over Forbes Field's right-field roof.
Q 13How many consecutive losing seasons did the Pirates post from 1993 to 2012, a record for the four major leagues?
20
Q 21The Civic Arena, built in 1961, was the world's first major sports venue with what feature?
A retractable roof
It was originally built for the Civic Light Opera; the roof stopped opening after 1995 and the building came down in 2011-12.
Q 22How many Stanley Cups have the Penguins won?
Five
The 2016 and 2017 wins made them the first back-to-back champions of the salary-cap era.
Q 23Mario Lemieux is the only man whose name is on the Stanley Cup in which two roles?
Player and owner
He bought the bankrupt Penguins in 1999 and won three more Cups as owner before selling control to Fenway Sports Group in 2021.
The streak began the year after Sid Bream slid home for Atlanta in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS.
Q 14Whose statue was unveiled outside PNC Park on April 7, 2001, two days before he died?
Willie Stargell
He joins Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazeroski among the Hall of Famers cast in bronze around the park.
Q 15The Allegheny and Monongahela meet at Three Rivers Stadium's site to form which river?
The Ohio
It opened on July 16, 1970 with a Pirates loss to the Reds and was imploded in 2001 after the Steelers and Pirates moved to separate new homes.
Q 16Which Negro league team, formed by Cumberland Posey in 1912, ran for 38 seasons and won the 1948 Negro World Series?
The Homestead Grays
By 1943 they were playing most home games in Washington, D.C., which is why they are also called the Washington Grays.
Q 17Which Pittsburgh numbers boss bought the Crawfords in 1931, signed Satchel Paige and built them a ballpark?
Gus Greenlee
Paige and Josh Gibson unwound at his Crawford Grill, where Lena Horne and Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson performed.
Q 18Which Pittsburgh catcher became MLB's career batting average leader when Negro league stats were integrated in 2024?
Josh Gibson
Some who saw both men play called Babe Ruth 'the white Josh Gibson'; Gibson may have hit close to 800 home runs including exhibitions.
Q 19To which city did Pittsburgh's first NHL club move in 1930 to spend a final season as the Quakers?
Philadelphia
That team was also called the Pirates; captain Lionel Conacher scored the city's first NHL goal in a 2-1 win at Boston on Thanksgiving night 1925.
Q 20The Penguins' name was chosen partly because their home, the Civic Arena, carried what nickname?
The Igloo
'Penguins' won a naming contest with 700 of 26,000 entries; the triangle in the logo stands for downtown's Golden Triangle.
Q 24Which illness forced Mario Lemieux to miss the entire 1994-95 season?
Hodgkin's lymphoma
His back pain was at times so severe that other people had to tie his skates, yet he still retired with 690 goals.
Q 25Sidney Crosby wears number 87 and signed a 2007 deal paying $8.7 million a year. What does the number reflect?
His birthdate
He was born in Halifax on August 7, 1987, and PPG Paints Arena's hockey capacity of 18,087 nods to the number too.
Q 26When the Penguins beat Detroit in 2009, Sidney Crosby set what NHL record?
Youngest captain to win the Stanley Cup
He later became only the third player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy in consecutive years, in 2016 and 2017.
Q 27Which Penguins winger, drafted fifth in 1990, was the first Czechoslovak allowed to join the NHL without defecting?
Jaromír Jágr
Fans noticed that the letters of 'Jaromir' can be rearranged to spell 'Mario Jr.'; he won five Art Ross Trophies.
Q 28PPG Paints Arena opened in 2010 under what original name?
Consol Energy Center
PPG bought the rights in 2016 when the coal company wanted out of the deal during an energy-price slump.
Q 29A fan phoned which Pittsburgh broadcaster with the name 'Immaculate Reception'?
Myron Cope
NFL Films has ranked it both the greatest and the most controversial play of all time.
Q 30Which Steelers running back caught the Immaculate Reception and ran it in for the winning touchdown?
Franco Harris
The pass was intended for John Fuqua; whether Jack Tatum ever touched it is still argued in Oakland.