Fourteen chapter members and guests celebrated the 10th Annual SABR Day on Saturday, Jan. 26, with a fine Italian lunch in north Austin and a novel quiz about Hall of Fame members.
Attendees were treated (tortured?) by a trivia quiz I came up with – Name all of the inductees to the National Baseball Hall of Fame who have double letters in their first name, last name or both. The only clues provided were the revealed double letters and blanks for the rest of the name. The names were numbered and placed in alphabetical order.
For example, for the first name on the list, the entry looked like this: _a__ Aa___
The answer, of course, is Hank Aaron. If the same letter as the double letters appear elsewhere in the name, I included it in the clues (Wheel of Fortune style).
Recently, I noticed a few other Hall of Fame players with double letters in their names and wondered how many more there were. Surely, I thought, it would just be a handful of names. Would you be surprised to learn (as I was) that more than 40 percent of Hall of Famers have double letters in their names? Try your hand at the quiz by clicking here. For the answers, click here.
Tom Thayer took away the top prize, scoring an impressive 87 points, followed by Jerry Miller with a nearly equally impressive 83 points. When I read the answers, at times, it seemed like Tom was reading from the answer sheet; he nailed so many of them. And to be fair, our limited time may have prevented some contestants to do better on the quiz. One remarked he would have filled out more names if he had more time.
For his prowess, Tom was awarded the audio book for “The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood,” which consists of 14 audio CDs.
As usual, we had a wide variety of professional teams, baseball and otherwise, represented at the meeting. David hit the trifecta by representing Philadelphia very well, wearing a new Phillies t-shirt jersey with the newest Phillie Andrew McCuthen’s No. 22, a Philadelphia Flyers cap and replica of a Philadelphia Eagles world championship ring. Other teams represented included a Seattle Mariners jersey worn by Frank (in honor of Ichiro Suzuki’s recent signing); an Astros shirt by Tom T.; Round Rock Express cap and Fredbird sweatshirt; and a Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters cap and a long-sleeved t-shirt celebrating Japan’s World Baseball Classic win in 2006 by yours truly. In addition, Tom W. wore a Cleveland Browns sweatshirt, while Tom M. wore a Cleveland Indians sweatshirt paired with a Jim Thome cap. Jerry sported a Rams Deacon Jones jersey.
With less than a month to go before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, the chapter will have its next monthly meeting on Sunday, Feb. 24. More details to come in our chapter email list.
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