Casey-KOD Takes Angels Trivia Contest After Like 48 Hours

Poster Caseys Kiss Of Death answered all five questions in our trivia contest correctly. He will be the 14th and final member of the Halos Heaven CBS Sports Fantasy Baseball League. If you are starting a CBS Fantasy Baseball League, CLICK HERE to get a 50% discount on the $180 cost. Tell 'em Rev Halofan sent you!

1) Who sang the National Anthem prior to the Angels game in which Nick Adenhart recorded his lone major league win.

ANSWER: CHAKA KAHN

CKOD: I actually used HH itself for the Chaka Kahn reference. I went to B-R and found the date of Adenhart's win, then did a power search on our site to find the pre-game and game thread. At first, when I saw posts saying "Chaka Kahn," I thought it was just people joking that someone that looked like a presumed-dead 70s pseudo-icon actually sang. I was horrified to find this wasn't the case. Hint: don't search for audio/video evidence that it happened.

HH: I was at this game. For some reason, Taylor Longbrake was a popular answer to this question. This illustrates the difference between "google" and real life.

2) John Lackey pitched for Grayson Community College. What Angels legend was born 30 miles southwest of GCC?

ANSWER: GENE AUTRY

CKOD: The Gene Autry search I was stupid with. I didn't think outside the box for about 5-10 minutes, and did a B-R search for the birth locations of the first 10 guys on our HH top 100 Halos list. By the time I got to Chili Davis I said, "okay this is taking 'legend' too lightly." Then Autry just popped into my mind out of the blue in a "duh" moment, and Google maps confirmed it for me.

HH: Lots of people got this one right. It was mentioned during the 2002 Game 7 broadcast and I always remembered it. Don Baylor's Austin birthplace was a common wrong answer here. Austin is almost a hundred miles Southeast of GCC.

3) Name the Angels player with the most Games Played without a Plate Appearance.

ANSWER: FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ

CKOD: I used B-R for this one. I pulled up the Angels player history, focusing on pitchers as the most obvious targets. I categorized by games played and worked my way down the list focusing on relievers and guys that played before interleague. I knew to skip Scot Shields for some reason.

HH: It was "Mike Witt" for many years and still is on the MLB.com database, but BB-Ref has it right.

4) Name the pitcher who surrendered the first major league hit to Octavio V. Rojas-Rivas

ANSWER: SANDY KOUFAX

CKOD: B-R again. I knew that they had data going back quite a ways on each and every at-bat and result for players. I pulled up Cookie, went to his rookie game logs, found his first game with a hit, and went through his at-bat by at-bat logs. Koufax's name was right there. I guess Wikipedia would have been easier in hindsight. Easily the fastest discovered answer.

HH: This was the easiest answer in the quiz based on using the technique Casey described above.

5) Name the only Angels player to win more than two league MVPs at a pro level.

ANSWER: STEVE BILKO

CKOD: Man, screw this question. I discarded Baylor and Guerrero without ever even looking. Too obvious. I looked at all the three-time MVPs in baseball history. I knew without looking none were Angels. The word "pro" was always the biggest tip-off, anyway...clearly enticing me to look outside of the MLB. Did Japanese phenom Alex Ramirez ever play for the Angels? Nope...couldn't really find any international leagues that even have such an award. Same with a lot of the minor leagues...hitter of the year, pitcher of the year, etc. All dead ends. Every search of Winter Leagues kept taking me back to Grant Goddamn Desme. I searched pioneer leagues, dominican leagues, learned about a dozen leagues I had never heard of, and got sick of it. After giving up entirely on the answer for most of a day, I read an article about the PCL on baseball-america, and I immediately jumped on Google for a search on a whim..."PCL" "mvp" "three-time," or something to that effect. Bilko's name popped up in the little blurb below the links in the search, and without even clicking, I went on the Wikipedia for Bilko, and saw "last appearance: Los Angeles Angels." Finally.

HH: This was the toughest question. I swear they asked this as a trivia question twice per season during the 1980s, and I recall the treachery of them asking it and showing Reggie Jackson in the field or on the bench. Barring injury, Hideki Matsui will tie this Angels mark when he makes his regular season debut in April. Frank Robinson was a popular answer, but he "only" won two league MVPs.