Your Saturday Sporcle: Now, leading off, for the Diamondbacks...

Jan 28, 2023 - 8:00 PM

Last week’s quiz was about veteran pitchers, and 80 of you took up the challenge. But it proved to be an even tougher test than the veteran hitters, with an average score of just 27%. But we did have a rare 100% hit-rate, with everyone on the quiz remembering the time that Tim Worrell spent with the Dia... Oh, who am I kidding. It was Randy Johnson who was listed on every attempt. Of course, his grinning mug being plastered across the top of the article perhaps helped, though we are taking arguably the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time while we’re at it. Brad Ziegler, J.J. Putz and Jorge De La Rosa rounded out the top, all over 85%: I think their initials probably worked in their favor as much as anything!

At the other end, though... Hoo-boy. We also had some equally rare 0%-ers. Worrell was not among them, as one person did recall his time here. I’d like to thank Mrs. Worrell for visiting the SnakePit. But that was still better than Buddy Groom or Jeff Fassero, neither of whom stuck in anyone’s memory at all. The latter is entirely understandable, since he appeared in precisely one game, during a season (2004) which we’ve all likely tried to erase from our consciousness. He faced three batters in one appearance during the final week of that campaign, retired them all, and was never seen again in a D-backs uniform. Probably the most veteran-y of veteran presences...

This week, it’s a follow up to our discussion on Monday about lead-off hitters. There are 32 men who have had 100 or more plate-appearances at the top of the Diamondbacks line-up. So there’s nobody here who should be considered outrageously obscure, although as ever, some of them may have been lost in the mists of time. You have eight minutes - an average of 15 seconds per name - to come up with them, and last names only are needed. They are listed alphabetically, which might help. It definitely feels like this is a little easier than the veteran position player and pitcher Sporcles of the last couple of weeks, so I’m raising the target score to 50%, which means naming sixteen of them.

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