Watching Judge and talking baseball at the September chapter meeting

Watching Aaron Judge’s at-bats, pondering a challenging quiz about Hall of Fame players traded when they were 25 years old or younger and talking about the playoff race highlighted the September chapter meeting on Saturday.

Seventeen chapter members and guests gathered at Hurricane Grill and Wings in Round Rock to talk about the teams that are in, and the teams that are hanging on. We also talked about the new playoff format and Albert Pujols’ two home run night to become only the fourth player in MLB history to reach the 700 club.

Ryan Pollack, who won a trivia quiz a few months ago, created a quiz in which we had to name Hall of Fame players (not too difficult) who were traded by their age 25 season or earlier (proved to be quite difficult!).

Tom Wancho took top honors on tiebreakers by outlasting Dan Walsh. Both scored 18 out of 39 total points. Jim Baker came in third with 15 points.

Take your turn with this quiz below. The answers follow the questions.

Chapter Commissioner Gilbert Martinez announced that the next chapter meeting would be the World Series Watch Party at Jim Baker’s house in Cedar Park, a long chapter tradition. It will be for World Series Game 2 on Saturday, Oct. 29.

Martinez also asked members to mark their calendars for Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023, when the chapter is planning to host its 17th Annual Bill Gilbert Winter Meeting. Meeting coordinator Jerry Miller is organizing the annual event and will be in touch with the chapter via the email list soon with more information.

During our meeting at Hurricane Grill and Wings, televisions around the restaurants were mostly showing college football games, but one was tuned to the matchup between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. We paused our discussions to watch closely for each Judge at-bat. In fact, ESPN’s broadcast of the Texas Longhorns-Texas Tech Red Raiders football game went to split-screen to show Judge’s at-bats.

Alas for some, Judge’s pursuit to tie Roger Maris with 61 home runs in a season would have to wait at least another day. Instead, while we were at Hurricane Grill, we saw Judge fly out and strike out.

In other news, Monte Cely shared that he’s not planning on attending the Caribbean Series, which is scheduled to be in Venezuela. His 10-year streak of attending the series was snapped in 2021 because of the coronavirus. He said he’s looking forward to the series coming to Miami, Florida, in 2024.

Also, Bailey Hall shared a story about meeting former Mets great Keith Hernandez and his broadcast partner Gary Cohen in the broadcast booth at Citi Field in New York in 2019. Her great-uncle, Mike Bryan, has been the ghost writer for a number of baseball books, working with Cal Ripken Jr. and Kirby Puckett. He’s also the author of “Pure Baseball,” written with Hernandez, which comes highly recommended by Bailey.

The October meeting will be Saturday, Oct. 29 (World Series Game 2 Watch Party). Jim Baker will be in touch with the chapter through the email list.

This was the 190th consecutive month in which the chapter has met, a streak dating to December 2006.

Hornsby Chapter Quiz 9/24/22

By Ryan Pollack

Thirteen Hall of Fame inductees have been traded prior to, or during, their age-25 season. Fill in the following table – one point for each answer, 39 points total. “Traded From” and “Traded To” must be the full city/team name to receive a point; e.g. “Sugarland Space Cowboys.”

Player full name	Traded From	Traded To

Tiebreaker questions involved identifying the age at which each player was traded.

Answer Key

Player Name	Traded From	Traded To	Age (Tiebreaker)	HOF Inducted Year
Roberto Alomar	SDP	TOR	22	2011
Bert Blyleven	MIN	TEX	25	2011
Lou Brock	CHC	STL	25	1985
Dennis Eckersley	CLE	BOS	23	2004
Nellie Fox	PHA	CHW	21	1997
Goose Gossage	CHW	PIT	25	2008
Trevor Hoffman	FLA	SDP	25	2018
Fergie Jenkins	PHI	CHC	23	1991
Ryne Sandberg	PHI	CHC	22	2005
Randy Johnson	MON	SEA	25	2015
George Kell	PHA	DET	23	1983
Pedro Martinez	LAD	MON	22	2015
Nolan Ryan	NYM	CAL	24	1999