Sports! Memphis Quiz No. 3 tackles bats, balls, pucks and more – Commercial Appeal
This is the third of what will be seven monthly “Memphis Memories” quizzes in The Commercial Appeal, and it focuses on a topic of intense interest to many and zero interest to some:
Sports.
As in basketball, football, baseball and so on, including — just as The Commercial Appeal sports pages used to, in days of yore — professional wrestling.
Like its predecessors, this is a multiple-choice quiz with 21 questions (because the year is 2021).
The first quiz focused on “Pop Culture.” This second quiz was similarly broad: “Geography, Science and Weather.”
This “Sports” quiz easily could have included 2,021 questions, and then some. The Tigers, the Grizzlies, Memphis wrestling — any of these could sustain their own extensive tests of knowledge (or trivia). But our space is limited, so fans of prep sports, Forest Arnold and racing greyhounds, please forgive the omissions.
Again, the purpose of this quiz is to entertain as much as to inform. This isn’t a meaningful measure of brainpower, but perhaps it will provide a few moments of amusement.
The answers appear at the bottom of the quiz.
THE QUESTIONS
1. Bill Walton’s performance during the 1973 NCAA championship game when UCLA defeated Memphis is the stuff of legend: He made 22 of 23 field goals and scored 44 points. The game’s second-highest scorer was Tiger shooting guard Larry Finch, with 29 points. Third in the scoring column was another Tiger, with 20 points. He was:
a) Forward Ronnie Robinson.
b) Center Larry Kenon.
c) Point guard Bill Laurie.
d) Shooting guard Bill Cook.
2. In 2000, Gene Bartow— beloved coach of the 1973 Tigers— and Finch reunited as general manager and assistant coach, respectively, on a team in the new “ABA 2000” professional basketball league. The team, which played before small crowds at the Desoto Civic Center, was known as:
a) The Memphis Tams.
b) The Memphis Sounds.
c) The Memphis Hound Dogs.
d) The Memphis Houn’Dawgs.
3. In 2001, World Wrestling Entertainment impresario Vince McMahon launched the XFL, an “extreme football” league that lasted only one season. The league’s eight teams included the Chicago Enforcers, the New York/New Jersey Hitmen, and the Law Vegas Outlaws, to name a few. The Memphis franchise was called:
a) The Memphis Hound Dawgz.
b) The Memphis Killerz.
c) The Memphis Hustlerz.
d) The Memphis Maniax.
4. Speaking of pro football, which of these was not an actual Memphis professional football team?
a) The Memphis Mad Dogs.
b) The Memphis Hound Dogs.
c) The Memphis Pharaohs.
d) The Memphis Showboats.
5. From 1964 to 1969, Memphis fielded (rinked?) back-to-back farm teams in the now-defunct Central Professional Hockey League, which was owned by the National Hockey League. Playing at the Mid-South Coliseum, the teams were:
a) The Memphis Skates and the Memphis Mallards.
b) The Memphis Wings and the Memphis South Stars.
c) The Memphis Flyers and the Memphis Magnolias.
d) The Memphis Rovers and the Memphis Redhawks.
6. On June 10, 1977, during the second round of what was then known as the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic, Al Geiberger earned the nickname “Mr. 59” for being the first golfer on the PGA tour to break 60. (The feat was not repeated until 14 years later when Chip Beck finished with 59 at the Las Vegas Invitational.) But two days earlier, Memphis golf made national news when a well-known person hit a hole-in-one on the 157-yard No. 5 at Colonial Country Club, during the pro-am event that preceded the tournament. Who was the celebrity?
a) Comic Bob Hope.
b) Football star Joe Namath.
c) Former President Gerald Ford.
d) Astronaut Alan Shepard (also the first man to hit a golf ball on the moon).
7. What is particularly notable about the 1982 Liberty Bowl?
a) Halftime entertainment was provided by Michael Jackson, fortuitously booked for the event before the previous month’s release of the “Thriller” album, which had turned Jackson into the world’s most popular entertainer.
b) It marked the first Liberty Bowl appearance of the hometown University of Memphis Tigers.
c) It represented the final coaching appearance of University of Alabama legend Paul “Bear” Bryant.
d) A potential game-winning rushing touchdown was called back when the players were joined on the field by a streaker.
8. On Nov. 10, 1996, the underdog University of Memphis Tigers (who would end the season with a 4-7 record) defeated quarterback Peyton Manning and the sixth-ranked University of Tennessee Volunteers in a nationally televised game before a record crowd of 65,885 at the Liberty Bowl. The score was 21 to 17. What was the headline that appeared the next day in big letters across the top of The Commercial Appeal?
a) TIGERS ROOOOAAAR!
b) MEMPHIS MAGIC
c) PEYTON WHO?
d) ORANGE CRUSHED
9. According to The Commercial Appeal, Memphis was “the capital of all baseball for one glorious night.” The night was Aug. 15, 1994, when ESPN came to the old Tim McCarver Stadium at the Fairgrounds to televise a minor-league game between the Birmingham Barons and the Memphis Chicks (now the Memphis Redbirds). Which two of these reasons explain ESPN’s interest?
a) Having opted for baseball over football, former Heisman Trophy winner Bo Jackson was playing left field for the Chicks.
b) Major league baseball was on strike.
c) Hoops superstar Michael Jordan was on the Barons roster, having decided to give baseball a try after his surprise retirement from basketball.
d) The Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau had agreed to pay $1 million to ESPN as an “incentive,” arguing that the exposure on the network would provide millions of dollars of promotion.
10. On Nov. 17, 2001, the winless Memphis Grizzlies earned their first victory in their new home venue, the Pyramid, defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers, 98-93. The game’s top scorer and rebounder were, respectively:
a) Shane Battier and Pau Gasol.
b) Pau Gasol and Pau Gasol.
c) Shane Battier and Lorenzen Wright.
4) Pau Gasol and Stromile Swift.
11. The Memphis Grizzlies went 56-26 in 2012-13, the winningest season in franchise history. The leading scorer in points per game, with an average of 17.2, was:
a) Marc Gasol.
b) Mike Conley.
c) Zach Randolph.
d) Rudy Gay.
12. Which of these theoretically verboten weapons was professional wrestler Tojo Yamamoto (birth name: Harold Watanabe) wont to apply with forceful and malicious intent to the unprotected crania of his opponents, during his 1960s-1980s heyday?
a) Wooden shoe and “kendo stick.”
b) Chopsticks and miniature gong.
c) “Nunchuks” and “prayer beads.”
b) Shuriken (throwing stars) and tonfa (wooden batons).
13. “We are the Ramblin’ Rogues from Memphis, the biggest kick in town!” Some 40 years before the USL Championship league team 901 FC began playing at AutoZone Park, Memphis had a professional soccer team, the Memphis Rogues, which played at the Liberty Bowl from 1978-80 and which also played indoors at the Mid-South Coliseum during its final season. As seen in the team logo and on its branding, the Rogues’ cleats-wearing, ball-kicking mascot was:
a) a pirate.
b) an elephant.
c) a gorilla.
d) a weird indeterminate whatzit, in the manner of the Phillie Phanatic, the Philadelphia Flyers’ Gritty and the Atlanta Olympics’ Izzy.
14. This Melrose High School graduate won a gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. (Anfernee Hardaway also won a gold medal at that Olympics, as a member of the U.S. basketball team.) She is:
a) Mia Hamm.
b) Marion Jones.
c) Rochelle Stevens
d) Florence Griffith Joyner.
15. Another Memphis Olympian is Melanie Smith, who was part of a team that earned a gold medal in 1984. Which of these words would be most associated with Smith’s sport?
a) Horse.
b) Bobsled.
c) Sabre.
d) Arrow.
16. In 2005, following a playoff loss to the Phoenix Suns, Grizzlies point guard Jason “White Chocolate” Williams snatched away Geoff Calkins’ pen while the sports columnist for The Commercial Appeal was trying to conduct some post-game interviews. Williams told Calkins:
a) “How you pronounce ‘Gee-off’? Write it out for me, homeboy.”
b) “You ain’t gonna do nothin’, homeboy. You ain’t gonna write nothin’.”
c) “Homeboy, the only way you’re getting this pen back is in your eyeball.”
d) “James Joyce once said: ‘My methods are new and are causing surprise. I throw dust in the eyes of blind men to make them see.’ You ain’t no James Joyce, homeboy.”
17. In 1991, radio station WHRK-FM (“K97”) hosted an exhibition charity basketball game at Vance Junior High School that featured the participation of this celebrated musical duo:
a) DJ Paul and Juicy J of Three 6 Mafia.
b) Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy.
c) Salt & Pepa.
d) Peaches & Herb.
18. Memphis running back DeAngelo Williams, who played for the Tigers from 2002-2005, is one of only seven players to have rushed for more than ____ yards in his college career.
a) 4,000.
b) 5,000.
c) 6,000.
d) 7,000.
19. The top career scorer in Memphis Tigers basketball is Keith Lee, with 2,408 points. Elliot Perry is second (2,209), while Larry Finch is fourth (1,869). No. 3, with 1,893 points, is:
a) Cedric Henderson.
b) Rodney Carney.
c) Dexter Reed.
d) Forrest Arnold.
20. Why were Memphians peeved by the April 1, 1985 cover of Sports Illustrated, which was keyed to that week’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament Final Four, which pitted Memphis State against Villanova and Georgetown against St. John’s?
a) The cover blurb read “Catholics 3, Bible Belt 1.”
b) The cover mislabeled Tiger players, identifying Keith Lee as William Bedford.
c) The cover featured photographs of Patrick Ewing of Georgetown, Chris Mullin of St. John’s and Dwayne McClain of Villanova — but nobody from Memphis.
d) The blurb “Can Memphis pull an upset?” suggested the Tigers weren’t the equal of the competition.
21. One of the players on that Tigers Final Four team — amazingly, all but one of the 12 were from Memphis or Shelby County — was 6-foot-7 forward Baskerville Holmes, whose distinctive name was the delight of out-of-town TV announcers. Reportedly, Holmes’ mother, Dora, chose that name for her son because:
a) It was close to “basketball,” and she hoped her son would become a star player.
b) She loved Baskin-Robbins ice cream, but always got the name wrong.
c) She had found it in an A-Z book of unusual baby names.
d) She was watching the Sherlock Holmes movie “The Hound of the Baskervilles” when she went into labor.
THE ANSWERS:
1. B. (Only four players scored in double figures in the game, the fourth being UCLA’s Jamaal Wilkes, with 16.)
2. D.
3. D.
4. B. (The Canadian Football League’s Mad Dogs, owned by FedEx founder Fred Smith, played at the Liberty Bowl in 1995; the Arena Football League’s Pharaohs played at the Pyramid in 1995 and 1996; and the Showboats, coached by Pepper Rodgers, played at the Liberty Bowl in 1984 and ’85.)
5. B. (The teams were affiliated with the Detroit Red Wings and the Minnesota North Stars; in 1993, the latter moved to Texas and became the Dallas Stars.)
6. C. (Ford lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, so his term as president had ended less than five months earlier.)
7. C. (Alabama beat Illinois, 21-15; meanwhile, the Tigers did not make their Liberty Bowl debut until 2017.)
8. D.
9. B and C. (Jordan — who returned to basketball the next year — actually didn’t play, in that game due to a shoulder injury.) (P.S.: Jackson played for the Chicks in 1986.)
10. A.
11. D. (Gay was traded in mid-season, and played only 42 games in a Grizz uniform. The next top scorer that year was Randolph, who averaged 15.4 points in 76 games.)
12. A.
13. B.
14. C. (Stevens won a gold medal in the woman’s 4-x-400 meter relay race).
15. A. (Smith won a gold medal in show jumping with the American equestrian team at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.)
16. B.
17. B.
18. C. (Williams rushed for 6,026 yards.)
19. B.
20. C. (The actual cover blurb was “The NCAAs: A Big East Feast”; the story’s focus was on the dominance of the Big East conference.)
21. D.
Grade assessment: All 21 correct: Great Caesar’s ghost! It’s time to unwrap your victory cigar. 20-18: Hammer, nail, coffin, this quiz is over! 18-15: You whooped that trick. 15-10: Your towel could use more growl. 10-5: Jerry Lawler slapped you on national television. 5-0: You are to quizzes as Hasheem Thabeet is to Grizzlies’ draft picks.