Home Run Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Home Run trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Nothing in baseball gets a crowd on its feet like a home run, and nothing generates more arguments: whose record counts, who really hit the longest one, and whether 61 deserves an asterisk. This quiz covers the whole subject: the career and single-season records in MLB, Japan and the Negro leagues; the famous shots (Bobby Thomson, Bill Mazeroski, Carlton Fisk, Kirk Gibson, Joe Carter); grand slams and walk-offs; the rules and history behind the play; and the Home Run Derby. You'll get questions on Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Sadaharu Oh, Roger Maris, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, plus oddities like the last bounce home run, the only father-and-son back-to-back and the home run cycle that has never happened in the majors. Difficulty ranges from questions any fan will get to details for people who read box scores for fun. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Barry Bonds, MLB's career home run leader with 762, is the godson of which Giants great?
Willie Mays
Willie Mays was a Giants teammate and close friend of Barry's father, Bobby Bonds, who asked him to be the boy's godfather; Barry spent his childhood around their clubhouse.
Q 02Whose all-time record did Bonds break with his 756th home run in 2007?
Hank Aaron
Hank Aaron had taken the record from Babe Ruth in 1974, after a chase that brought him thousands of letters a week, hate mail and death threats among them.
Q 03Which pitcher gave up Barry Bonds's record-breaking 756th home run in 2007?
Mike Bacsik
Mike Bacsik's father, also a big-league pitcher, had faced the previous record holder in 1976 with that slugger on 755; the son joked that if Dad had given one up, both would have allowed number 756.
Q 04The 715th home run that broke Babe Ruth's career record in 1974 came off which Dodgers pitcher?
Al Downing
Al Downing's pitch was driven into the Braves' bullpen, where reliever Tom House, who had stationed himself in left-centre expecting just such a drive, caught the ball.
Q 05Who holds the verified world record for professional career home runs, with 868?
Sadaharu Oh
Sadaharu Oh hit from a 'flamingo' stance, balanced on one leg as the pitch came, which he perfected through martial-arts training that included swinging a samurai sword.
Q 06Babe Ruth was nicknamed the Bambino and 'the Sultan of' what?
Swat
Swat fitted the game's most famous slugging outfielder, yet Ruth began his big-league career as a star left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.
Q 07Which Negro league slugger's Hall of Fame plaque says he hit 'almost 800' home runs?
Josh Gibson
Josh Gibson, often compared with Babe Ruth, never played in the American or National League: he died at 35 in January 1947, three months before Jackie Robinson's debut.
Q 08Barry Bonds hit a record 73 home runs in 2001 while also piling up a then-record 177 of what?
Walks
Walks: pitchers would rather put Bonds on base than pitch to him, and by 2004 he was being walked 232 times in a season, 120 of them intentionally.
Q 09Babe Ruth's record 60 home runs in 1927 anchored which famously nicknamed Yankees lineup?
Murderers' Row
Murderers' Row outscored its opponents by nearly 400 runs that year, and Ruth's 60 homers alone were more than any other American League team managed.
Q 10Who broke Ruth's single-season mark with 61 home runs in 1961?
Roger Maris
Roger Maris was so worn down by the chase that his hair fell out in clumps and he had trouble sleeping; number 61 came on the last day of the season.
Q 11Why did baseball's commissioner want the 61-homer record of 1961 kept apart from Ruth's?
The season was eight games longer
The season was eight games longer, 162 instead of 154; Ford Frick, once Ruth's ghostwriter and friend, never actually called for an asterisk, which was a sportswriter's suggestion.
Q 12In which 1988 film does veteran catcher Crash Davis break the minor-league home run record?
Bull Durham
Bull Durham has Crash set the record with a different club, the Asheville Tourists; writer-director Ron Shelton drew on his own years as a minor-league infielder.
Q 13Which slugger hit 62 home runs in 2022, breaking an American League record that had stood since 1961?
Q 21Whose ninth-inning homer won Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, the first Series ever to end on a home run?
Bill Mazeroski
Bill Mazeroski, a second baseman prized for his glove, beat a Yankees team that had outscored Pittsburgh 55-27 across the seven games.
Q 22Joe Carter's 1993 World Series-winning home run came off which Phillies pitcher?
Mitch Williams
Mitch Williams, the closer nicknamed 'Wild Thing', never pitched for Philadelphia again: after death threats from fans during the Series, he was traded to Houston that December.
Q 23The 1951 'Shot Heard 'Round the World' was hit by which New York Giant?
Bobby Thomson
Aaron Judge
Aaron Judge hit number 62 in Texas in the Yankees' second-to-last game of the season; that winter the team re-signed him and named him its captain.
Q 14Who was Mark McGwire's rival in the 1998 home run chase, finishing with 66?
Sammy Sosa
Sammy Sosa is the only player with three seasons of 60 or more home runs, yet he led the league in none of them; his 66 in 1998 did win him the MVP award.
Q 15McGwire's record-breaking 62nd home run in 1998 came off which Cubs pitcher?
Steve Trachsel
Steve Trachsel gave up a drive that only just cleared the left-field wall: at 341 feet it was the shortest of the 70 home runs McGwire hit that season.
Q 16According to The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, the term 'grand slam' comes from which card game?
Contract bridge
Contract bridge players call winning every trick in a hand a grand slam, a card-table sense recorded as early as 1800; sport later borrowed it for the bases-loaded homer.
Q 17Fernando Tatís Sr. hit two grand slams in one inning in 1999, both off which pitcher?
Chan Ho Park
Chan Ho Park was left in to face Tatís a second time with the bases loaded in the same third inning; the eight runs driven in remain a record for one inning.
Q 18Which Red Sox switch-hitter is the only player to hit grand slams from both sides of the plate in one game?
Bill Mueller
Bill Mueller hit them in consecutive at-bats against Texas in July 2003, part of a three-homer night, and finished that season as the American League batting champion.
Q 19Who hit the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history, in Game 1 in 2024?
Freddie Freeman
Freddie Freeman, playing on a badly sprained ankle, hit it in the tenth inning for a 6-3 Dodgers win, then homered in each of the next three games as well.
Q 20Which Hall of Fame reliever is credited with coining the term 'walk-off'?
Dennis Eckersley
Dennis Eckersley called a game-ending homer a 'walk-off piece', a phrase in print by April 1988; that October he gave one up himself to lose Game 1 of the World Series.
Bobby Thomson's homer won the pennant; in 2001 a newspaper revealed the Giants had been stealing signs with a telescope that season, though he always said he got no help on that swing.
Q 24Who hit a pinch-hit walk-off home run for the Dodgers in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series?
Kirk Gibson
Kirk Gibson had injured both legs and limped around the bases; it was his only appearance of the Series, and weeks later he was named the league's MVP.
Q 25Fenway Park's left-field foul pole is named after which catcher, whose 1975 World Series homer struck it?
Carlton Fisk
Carlton Fisk hopped down the line waving the ball fair in the twelfth inning of Game 6, forcing a seventh game that his team then lost to Cincinnati.
Q 26Which light-hitting Yankees shortstop homered over the Green Monster in the 1978 tiebreaker?
Bucky Dent
Bucky Dent had hit only four home runs all season before that three-run shot; he went on to be named World Series MVP, and Red Sox fans gave him an unprintable middle name.
Q 27Babe Ruth's 'called shot' came against the Cubs in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series at which ballpark?
Wrigley Field
Wrigley Field's crowd and the Cubs' bench had been heckling Ruth; film shows he gestured before the pitch, but whether he was pointing to the bleachers is still argued.
Q 28Who hit three home runs in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, on three consecutive first pitches?
Reggie Jackson
Reggie Jackson hit them off three different Dodgers pitchers; counting his final swing of Game 5, he had homered on four swings in a row.
Q 29Who holds the career record for home runs leading off a game, with 81?
Rickey Henderson
Rickey Henderson, better known as the stolen-base king, could also open a game with a homer; in 1993 he led off both games of a doubleheader with one.
Q 30Which Mets star hit a go-ahead home run in New York's first baseball game after the September 11 attacks?
Mike Piazza
Mike Piazza's two-run shot in the eighth inning put the Mets ahead 3-2 at Shea Stadium, which days earlier had served as a staging area for rescue workers.