Q 01/05

In which New York village is the Baseball Hall of Fame located?

A) Cooperstown

B) Hyde Park

C) Canton

D) Saratoga Springs

Answer · why

A) Cooperstown

Cooperstown is now shorthand for the Hall itself, which grew from a battered old ball found in a farmhouse attic nearby in 1935.

Q 02/05

Which slugger did 11 of the Hall's first voters skip?

A) Babe Ruth

B) Lou Gehrig

C) Mel Ott

D) Hank Greenberg

Answer · why

A) Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth had retired only the previous June; with no waiting rule yet, 215 of the 226 writers voted him straight into the class of 1936.

Q 03/05

Baseball Hall of Fame founder Stephen Clark was heir to which company's wealth?

A) The Standard Oil fortune

B) The Singer sewing fortune

C) The Eastman Kodak fortune

D) The Heinz ketchup fortune

Answer · why

B) The Singer sewing fortune

The Singer sewing fortune let Clark pay for the Hall's building himself; his grandfather had been Isaac Singer's business partner.

Q 04/05

Which Civil War general was wrongly credited with inventing baseball in the Hall's home village?

A) Joshua Chamberlain

B) Ulysses S. Grant

C) Abner Doubleday

D) George Meade

Answer · why

C) Abner Doubleday

Abner Doubleday was a cadet at West Point in 1839, the year of the supposed invention, and never claimed any link to the game himself.

Q 05/05

Which Giants pitcher was the only member of the Baseball Hall of Fame's first five elected after his death?

A) Walter Johnson

B) Christy Mathewson

C) Honus Wagner

D) Babe Ruth

Answer · why

B) Christy Mathewson

Christy Mathewson died of tuberculosis in 1925, seven years after he was exposed to poison gas in France as a captain in the Army's chemical warfare u...