TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Trivial Pursuits Part 907

It's not Hot Stove League time by a long shot, but I've nevertheless been distracted from time to time by playing with the Oracle of Baseball at Baseball-Reference.com. It's not actually an oracle per se, but a chain-of-connections generator that will link up any two baseball players in baseball history via a chain of team-mates. (The inspiration is that great parlor game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which one tries to link any given actor to Kevin Bacon via a chain of co-starring roles in movies.)

For example, to link up Barry Bonds to one of the first great star professionals, Harry Wright, we go as follows:

Barry Bonds played with Jim Morrison for the 1986 Pittsburgh Pirates;
Jim Morrison played with Minnie Minoso for the 1980 Chicago White Sox;
Minnie Minoso played with Phil Cavaretta for the 1954 Chicago White Sox;
Phil Cavaretta played with Charlie Grimm for the 1936 Chicago Cubs;
Charlie Grimm played with Red Ames for the 1918 St. Louis Cardinals;
Red Ames played with Jim O'Rourke for the 1904 New York Giants;
Jim O'Rourke played with Harry Wright for the 1873 Boston Red Stockings.

Wirght and his brother George, of course, played for the 1869 Cincinnati club, the first all-professional team. In a chain of eight players, we can get from the first great star to the biggest star of today.

The toy is interesting for suggesting some connections about the chain of baseball knowledge (I'd like to see a version using managers, to see what managers played as players for what previous managers), and it's a nice way of demonstrating the continuity of our game. But mostly it's a toy.

In preparation for the off-season, I'm issuing a challenge to our readers to find the following types of chains using the Baseball Oracle:

- See if you can find a chain longer than eight players; ground rule - the starting and ending player must be ten-year (minimum) veterans. I can't.

- Find the shortest and longest chains of team-mate All-Stars from the first All-Star game in 1933 to the 2004 All-Star game (the Oracle may not be useful in researching this, but will at least confirm it for you.)

- Find the shortest chain that covers the longest period of time for two, three, four, five, six, and seven players.

- Any other interesting chains.

There's no prize, save for the knowledge you accumulate along the way. Post your findings on the message board.

posted by The Crank 8:29 AM