1. Would LeBron James be the best soccer player in America? Or would LeBron James be the best tight end in the NFL?
The best soccer player in the world is about the size of Tom Cruise, so LeBron’s massive frame and athleticism would help him only so much. That sport is about acceleration (good for LeBron), speed (good), vision (good) and footskills (not necessarily a learned attribute, but if one can master a jump shot, then why not a corner kick?) Still, he’d almost be too big for soccer. Nobody needs too much bulk to run around with for 90 minutes. Russell Westbrook, or someone of his ilk — Steph Curry, Chris Paul — would be better suited.
As for football, everything that makes him the best basketball player in the world would make him the best football player in the world, provided that he’d gone through high school and college with the right coaches and was utilized in the proper manner. Football is a game of physicality when you’re not playing quarterback. LeBron would only need a fraction of the intuition and smarts he shows on the basketball court to run routes and jump over people to catch the ball. I mean, if Gronk can do it…
2. Where would an NFL team that goes 0-0-16 finish in the standings?
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If a team were to tie every game, its equivalent record would be 8-8, as the NFL counts a tie as half-win, half-loss. This is why the 7-8-1 Panthers won the NFC South last year over the 7-9 New Orleans Saints. Basically, their record was 7.5-8.5, better than 7-9. If the team had been 6-7-3, they’d have tied. Of course, the above is the ultimate hypothetical. Matt Flynn and Christian Ponder and never facing off in a playoff again.
3. Whoever came up with the seemingly arbitrary number of 162 baseball games per season?
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It started as basic math and evolved from there. In 1920, there were only eight teams in each of the American and National leagues. It was determined that one team would play the other seven teams 22 times each, making for the old standard, 154 games. Then expansion came in and the league cut down on the number of games teams played against the rest of the league, lest there be a 198-game schedule. Ten teams, nine rivals, 18 games per rival = 162 games. With further expansion, the creation of divisions and interleague play, it took creativity to keep it at 162 games (you’d play teams in your division more, etc.) but that’s where it stood. However, the answer as to why 22 games (11 home, 11 away) versus every other team in the league was first decided? I’d imagine the league presidents just came up with it nearly 100 years ago and then, with the bump to 162 games, it stuck and never changes because baseball is the game that prides itself of its connection to the past.
4. What’s the furthest Babe Ruth ever traveled on a road trip from home?
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While teams routinely travel across the country (Bryce Harper and his Nationals can ping-pong from Washington to Los Angeles to San Diego to Denver and back to Washington, no problem), the old days of baseball required teams to go a lot less far, as there were no teams west of the Mississippi. Ruth’s longest road trip would have been during his two stints in Boston, when the team would make the 1.036-mile trek to St. Louis. During Ruth’s time in New York, however, he would never travel over 1,000 miles for a road trip. The longest distance would be the 850-mile train ride to, not surprisingly, St. Louis. Of the seven teams the Yankees would play, five were within 500 miles and none were more than that aforementioned 850. This year, the Yankees traveled 29,713 miles in total, including visits to 15 teams more than 850 miles away.
5. How many words are in each major sports’ rule books?
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MLB: 104,043
NHL: 70,560
Golf: 61,304
NFL: 58,884
NBA: 31,676
Soccer: 24,459
Tennis: 13,998
6. Why is it called a touchdown?
A touchdown has roots in rugby, when one of the ways a team would be allowed to kick (the only way to score) was after an offensive player had touched the ball down in opponent’s territory.
7. Just how unbelievable was that Wimbledon match that finished 70-68 in the third set?
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Prior to Isner-Mahut’s first-round marathon in 2010, the longest tennis match by time was 6 hours 43 minutes. Isner-Mahut went 11 hours 5 minutes over three days. (Which is actually quite fast given the amount of games played. It shows how the games were basically serve-a-thons for the entirety of the fifth set.) They played 183 games in all, with the fifth set having more games (138) itself than any other match in tennis history — and that includes an era in which there were no tiebreakers. The previous record for amount of games was 126, from 1966 when Roger Taylor defeated Wieslaw Gasiorek in Warsaw 27-29, 31-29, 6-4. (I love that 6-4 at the end.) Isner-Mahut is one of those records that will never, ever been approached, let alone surpassed. It was perhaps the oddest match in tennis history.
8. Why do generally reasonable people believe the two large NBA conspiracies — that the 1985 lottery was rigged and that Michael Jordan’s first retirement was for gambling?
No one really believes the MJ thing, except maybe Bill Simmons when he’s feeling punchy. It makes no sense on any level, namely that Jordan wouldn’t have returned late in his second season of retirement. The Stern one has more traction, but if you buy it, then there’s a very reasonable question that is never asked or answered: If David Stern was so intent on fixing the lottery so the Knicks’ envelope would be selected, why did he have it videotaped? The obvious answer is “so no one would say it was shady,” but Stern’s a smart guy. He’d have to know that if the Knicks got Ewing, people were going to say it was a fix. So why not just have fix it in a back room, all easy-like, like they do now, and have “official watchers” to “confirm” the proceedings. Stern just unilaterally decided things anyway, like Chris Paul not going to the Lakers. I know he was younger then, but a genius wouldn’t have been so haphazard about it.
9. Why are baseball stadiums able to be any shape they feel like?
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It all stems from the days when parks where thrown down in city blocks that could allow them. Though infields of all parks are the same, the outfield dimensions can vary by dozens of feet depending where you go in baseball. The Astros put a freakin’ hill in centerfield! All this nonconformity (which people love, I should add) first started when baseball parks were just that, parks. They weren’t enclosed spaces. Then, once stadiums started to be built, they had to fit in the specific blocks where they were erected. That led to oddities such as the Green Monster and the short porch at Yankee Stadium. For a time, the retro dimensions were just that, retro, as the super-stadiums of the 1970s were built as concrete, multi-use, zero-character stadium with general dimensions. But Camden Yards brought back the unique touches to a stadium and now every new ballpark wants to have a defining characteristic, including zig-zags in a wall or deep power alleys that eventually get brought in. Houston has a freakin’ hill with a flagpole in centerfield. Just sitting there! There are no rules — except that there are in how long the distances have to be down the lines (325 feet) and to center field (400 feet). Everything else is in bounds.
10. Could a tennis player go out with a huge racquet and could a goalie just add so many pads that he covers the entire goal?
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No and no. Both are regulated. A tennis racquet is “shall not exceed 73.7 cm (29.0 inches) in overall length, and 31.7 cm (12.5 inches) in overall width. The hitting surface shall not exceed 39.4 cm (15.5 inches) in overall length, when measured parallel to the longitudinal axis of the handle, and 29.2 cm (11.5 inches) in overall width.” A goalie’s pads can only go 45% of the distance between the center of his knee and his pelvis. The average of that distance is about 20 inches, so the pads couldn’t go 11 inches above the center of the knee.
11. Are you more likely to bowl a 300 or hit a hole-in-one?
The accepted odds for any male bowler rolling 300 is 11,500 to one. The odds of a hole-in-one are 12,500 to one, which make it much closer than you’d expect, with a 300 game being slightly more likely. But here’s where it gets interesting. While the odds of a pro bowler rolling a 300 plummet to 460/1, a pro golfer is only five times as likely (2500/1) to hit a hole-in-one. Why? Hole-in-ones take a good shot and a lot of luck.
12. Which “unbreakable” record has the best chance of being broken.
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You all have seen the lists a hundred times: unbreakable sports records. (We’re using Complex’s Top 50 list as our guide.) Some are so far out there they make your head spin (Cy Young’s 511 wins). Others are etched into your memory (Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive games or Ted Williams’ .406 batting average). Some you don’t know by heart, but you’re well aware of who owns it (Wayne Gretzky’s 2,857 points). To answer this hypothetical, we first eliminated “unbreakable” records that we don’t consider unbreakable, namely the least reliable records — the NFL’s. Brett Favre, Peyton Manning and Jerry Rice own a ton of marks, but as the NFL becomes more offense-friendly, I feel like any of those are up for grabs. (Even Favre’s consecutive start streak, which is probably the most unbreakable of all the modern NFL records, could go down because we’re about five years from quarterbacks wearing red jerseys and having flags tucked into their belt.) So what will it be? Generally, the most unbreakable records tend to be records set over a season or career,. The single-game records always feel more breakable because all it takes is one hot night — which is why I believe that, at some point, someone is going to break Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point record. Kobe had 55 points in the second half of his 81-point game, so it’s doable. We like to put that one on a pedestal and say it’ll never be touched, but give me 48 minutes to break one a mark instead of the 17 years it’d take to pass Ripken.
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13. Who is the most anonymous player in the NBA?
There are plenty of anonymous players on NFL and MLB teams. They’re stuck on the third-string or riding the pine as a September call-up. Most players on NHL teams are anonymous to the world. But the NBA is more exclusive with its smaller rosters — looking through every player in the league, you’ll be surprised at how many you know. Initially, we figured our answer would be a foreign player who hadn’t played in college and was a benchwarmer in the pros, with a name that wasn’t too memorable who plays on a team, preferably west coast, that isn’t on TV very much. But then we looked through the NBA player roll and saw seven guys with the last name “Johnson.” Since it’s hard enough to keep Joe from James from Tyler, we figured the worst of the Johnsons would be hardest to ID. Ergo the most anonymous player in the NBA is:
Congratulations. But you go for that 100-point record anyway. It’s the trying that counts.
