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MLB trivia round two: MLB’s ‘youngest records’

By Rick Soisson |
NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 19: Alex Rodriguez #13 of the New York Yankees hits a home run for his 3000th career hit in the first inning against Justin Verlander #35 of the Detroit Tigers during their game at Yankee Stadium on Friday, June 19, 2015 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 19: Alex Rodriguez #13 of the New York Yankees hits a home run for his 3000th career hit in the first inning against Justin Verlander #35 of the Detroit Tigers during their game at Yankee Stadium on Friday, June 19, 2015 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Here’s Call to the Pen’s round two of MLB trivia, taking a look at the youngest records in MLB history.

There’s something compelling for baseball fans about very young MLB players. This surely has to do with expectation and hope – hope, specifically, for another Mickey Mantle, probably the highest profile player to debut as a teenager. (He hit .267 at nineteen for the ‘51 Yankees, with 13 homers and 65 RBI in 96 games.) Mix that with MLB trivia, and you’ve got the perfect dynamic duo.

MLB trivia: Your challenges, then, regarding baseball’s youngest record holders:

1) Who was the youngest pitcher to reach 300 wins?

2) Who was the youngest ever MLB player, and who was the second youngest?

3) Name the youngest player in the history of The Show to hit a home run, and give any other statistic from his career.

4) Who is the record holder for most MLB homers by a teenager? Who are second and third?

5) Name the last player under the age of 19 to make his MLB debut.

6) Who was the youngest player to hit 100 MLB home runs?

7) Give the youngest to throw a no-hitter.

8) Who was the youngest player to steal 100 bases two years in a row?

9) Switch it up: Name the oldest player to hit his first MLB home run.

MLB trivia: The answers:

1) The nineteenth-century ace Kid Nichols was the youngest player to reach 300 wins – at the age of 30. Charles Augustus Nichols began pitching for the Boston Braves in 1890 and won at least 20 games for his first ten seasons, several times notching 30-plus wins. He finished his career with 360 wins and 202 losses and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1949.

2) Cincinnati’s pitcher Joe Nuxhall, who debuted June 10, 1944, is MLB’s youngest player ever thus far, and likely to remain so unless there’s another World War. Nuxhall was only fifteen years, 316 days old when he took the field for the first time.

He narrowly beat out two sixteen-year-olds as the World War II-era’s youngest player, but the actual second youngest player ever was Piggy Ward, an infielder-outfielder who first played for the first Phillies team on June 12, 1883. Frank Gray Ward was a mere sixteen years, 57 days old that day.

3) The youngest bomber ever was the Brooklyn’s Tommy Brown, who homered at the age of seventeen years, 257 days in 1945. Brown also became the second-youngest home run hitter when he homered eleven days later (17/268).

This player had an uneven nine-year career with the Dodgers and Cubs, varying between 25 and 200 AB a year, and between .160 and .320 in BA.  He finished his career with 31 HRs and a .241 overall average.

4) The tragic Tony Conigliaro of the Red Sox hit the most homers as a teen – 24. The Nationals’ Bryce Harper is second on the list (22), and Mel Ott of the old New York Giants is third (19).

5) The last player under 19 to debut in major league baseball was Alex Rodriguez, who first played for Seattle at 18 years, 346 days in 1994, making him one of only two players under the age of 19 to debut in the last 40 years. The other was Tim Conroy, who debuted with the Oakland Athletics in 1978. At 18 years, 81 days, Conroy is the youngest player in MLB for that timeframe.

6) The youngest player to hit 100 home runs was Ott, who reached that plateau at 22 years, 132 days in 1931. The youngest AL player was Conigliaro who was only 65 days older than Ott when he reached 100 in 1967.

7) The youngest to throw a no-hitter was Amos Rusie, who twirled his early gem in 1891 for the Giants against the Brooklyn Grooms. He was 20 years, two months old, and eventually sported the unwieldy nickname The Hoosier Thunderbolt.

More from Call to the Pen

The youngest AL pitcher to throw a no-hitter was Oakland’s Vida Blue, who was 21 years, one month old in 1970. Arguably, however, Rusie’s was a different sort of no-hitter than Blue’s because the foul strike rule had not yet been instituted in 1891.

Blue is the youngest on the list of modern no-hit pitchers.

8) Rickey Henderson was the first and youngest player to steal over 100 bases in two straight years, but as this question is put, he was in a near dead heat with Vince Coleman. Henderson’s second straight season with 100 steals was 1983 when he stole his 100th base on Sept. 13.

He was 24 and turned 25 on Dec. 25 that year. Coleman stole 100 bases for a second straight year in 1986 when he was also 24; however, he swiped his 100th bag on Sept. 21. His 25th birthday was the next day. Coleman went on to also steal over 100 bases in 1987, the third consecutive year he passed that milestone.

9) The oldest player to book his first home run in The Show was the widely beloved Bartolo Colon, the ageless pitcher, who connected for his No. 1 for the New York Mets on May 7, 2016, against the Padres.

Next: CTTP Trivia and the killer MLB firsts challenge

Round two of our MLB trivia is in the books. How did you do? Sound off in the comments below and on our variety of social media pages.

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