Trivia Night: July 2005

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Rock n Roll History

The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame opened in 1986. Who was its first inductee?

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Premier Soviets

List the following Soviet Leaders in the chronological order in which they served:

a.) Georgy Malenkov
b.) Joseph Stalin
c.) Konstantin Chernenko
d.) Nikita Khrushchev

e.) Mikhail Gorbachev

f.) Yuri Andropov
g.) Leonid Brezhnev

Monday, July 18, 2005

Whitey's way

NAME	GW	GL	TOTAL	WL%
JOHN TUDOR	65	26	91	0.714
DIZZY DEAN	134	74	208	0.644
GROVER CLEVELAND ALEXANDER	55	34	89	0.618
BOB GIBSON	251	174	425	0.591
STEVE CARLTON	77	62	139	0.554

As you can see, Gibson is by far the "winningest" Cardinal pitcher. But ranked in order of this WL%, Tudor comes out on top. I don't think the question is a good one though. A simple question about the winningest pitcher would be OK, but I'm sure most people would guess Gibson. A decent question might be: Who's the second-most winningest Cardinal pitcher? Dizzy wins that one.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

If at first you don't succeed

OK, let me try this again. The term "winningest" is a term used by baseball folks to mean "the most wins." But it is also used now and then to mean the best ratio of wins/total games. Because of this ambiguity, I should not have used this term.

My question relates to the Win/Loss ratio. It's calculated like this: Bob Gibson had 251 wins and 174 losses. That's a total of 425 games that he had a decision in. 251 divided by 425 is .590. Gibson's lifetime WL% is .590. (Usually listed as .591.) I constructed this question after listening to Whitey Herzog talk about a particular pitcher and his WL% as a Cardinal. I didn't believe it, and I've looked everywhere for some verification without any luck. I also didn't think Whitey would just say something like that without it being true, so I tried to construct a question so the answer would be this fellow Whitey was talking about.

So, of pitchers with over 50 games as a Cardinal, who has the best franchise WL%?

I'm still not sure if that the exact phrasing I should use. Here are some questions that are not this one:

Of pitchers with over 50 games as a Cardinal, who has the best lifetime WL%?
Of pitchers with over 50 games as a Cardinal, who has the most wins?

I'll publish the answers to all of the questions after a little more research.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Winningest Cardinal Pitcher

OK, this is one for the Baseball purists out there. (Rob) Of pitchers with over 50 games as a St. Louis Cardinal, who is the winningest? (who has the best won/lost ratio?) I've researched this one tirelessly and I think I'm right. What do you think?

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

G8 Trivia

What does the "G" in G8 stand for? And, can you name the countries that belong to the G?

Monday, July 11, 2005

In what year?

In what year did the following 3 events take place?

In the US, a ban on TV cigarrette commercials starts
Apollo 14 lands on the moon
The voting age in the US goes from 21 to 18

Trivia Night