Can you name someone who played for both the Baltimore Orioles and Oakland Athletics?

If one came to mind or the question at least got you thinking, I recently discovered a game you may enjoy.

It’s called Immaculate Grid. A daily online baseball history quiz game, you attempt to fill in a 3-by-3 grid by naming nine different players whom satisfies the two-criteria listing for each square. You may try to guess a square as many times as you wish, but the caveat is you only get nine total guesses for the day, meaning one incorrect answer will make it impossible to completely fill in everything.

The game’s name plays on the “immaculate inning” term, which is used when a pitcher strikes out the only three hitters stepping up to the plate in a single inning in nine total pitches.

Only taking up a couple minutes of my time per day during the previous week, the game is fulfilling an itch for the kind of trivia that used to be part of my daily life which felt like could have been left behind years ago.

My father was into many things and the type of person that wanted to take deep dives into what he was most interested in at that moment. The U.S. Air Force may have been his greatest passion, but baseball ranked up there.

It started for him growing up west of the Mississippi River, back when radio signals were strong enough to clearly listen to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons on KSFO out of San Francisco while living in Arizona or Hawaii.

Several decades later I came along and developed a knack for putting his years of knowledge to the test.

Combing through with marvel at cumulative all-star game statistics, learning about unknown players or simply trying to guess and keep straight the members of the 500 career home run club were common discussions I got to share with him and how we liked to not take life so seriously.

When he died in 2017, I didn’t lose the want to. Only the person I normally did it with.

Currently my daughter doesn’t know what I’m talking about if I mention the word fastball. The first thing which most likely pops up in her mind is how quickly Cinderella had to leave her party. I love that about her. Maybe that will be one type of connection the two of us continue develop and look back on down the road.

I have an email from my dad saved in my inbox. It’s one of the final he ever sent me.

“Teaching you a love of baseball was one of my better accomplishments.”

The initial question posed is one I missed in a recent puzzle. Oh well. Just trying to answer it allows me to think back on how some truly trivial trivia can build some sturdy relationships.

Contact Steven Wright at 937-502-4498 and follow on Twitter @Steven_Wright_.