Dodgers Trivia
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This Dodgers trivia quiz has 89 free questions with answers and runs from the Brooklyn trolley dodgers of the 1880s to the back-to-back champions of 2024 and 2025. It covers Ebbets Field and the move west, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, Vin Scully's 67 seasons, Fernandomania, Kirk Gibson's impossible home run, Orel Hershiser's streak, Tommy Lasorda and Walter Alston, Clayton Kershaw, Shohei Ohtani and Dodger Stadium itself. It is written for fans and family game nights: some questions any Dodgers fan can answer in their sleep, others that will separate the lifers from the bandwagon. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries and baseball records before publishing.
30 of 89 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Dodgers' name comes from Brooklyn pedestrians who dodged what?
Streetcars
Streetcars: Brooklyn's trolley lines went electric in the 1890s, far faster than the horse cars before them, so the press dubbed locals, and by 1895 their ball club, 'Trolley Dodgers'.
Q 02When the Dodgers went west in 1958, which city did the rival Giants move to?
San Francisco
San Francisco: the Giants' owner had been planning a move to Minnesota until the Dodgers' owner talked him into California, keeping their New York rivalry alive on the West Coast.
Q 03Where did the Dodgers play their first four seasons in Los Angeles before Dodger Stadium opened?
The LA Memorial Coliseum
The LA Memorial Coliseum: the oval was laid out for other sports, so left field was absurdly short and a tall screen had to be hung above the fence to stop pop flies becoming home runs.
Q 04Which Yankees catcher insisted Jackie Robinson was out stealing home in the 1955 World Series?
Yogi Berra
Yogi Berra argued the call on the spot and for years afterwards; the Yankees still won that Game 1 by 6-5, but Brooklyn took the Series in seven games for its first title.
Q 05Which Dodgers executive signed Jackie Robinson, wanting a player 'with guts enough not to fight back'?
Branch Rickey
Branch Rickey spent three hours in August 1945 pressing Robinson on whether he could take racist abuse without hitting back, the promise he wanted before offering a contract.
Q 06Which Dodgers catcher won three NL MVP awards in the 1950s before a car accident ended his career?
Roy Campanella
Roy Campanella: his car skidded on ice in January 1958, weeks before the Dodgers' first season in Los Angeles, so the three-time MVP never played a game there.
Q 07Roger Kahn's 1972 book about the Brooklyn Dodgers of the early 1950s has which title?
The Boys of Summer
The Boys of Summer: Kahn borrowed the title from a Dylan Thomas poem that begins, 'I see the boys of summer in their ruin'.
Q 08Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1913 to 1957, was replaced on its site by what?
Apartment buildings
Apartment buildings: the Ebbets Field Apartments opened on the site in 1962, and the wrecking ball that levelled the park was used again four years later on the Polo Grounds, home of the rival Giants.
Q 09Dodger Stadium was built in which Los Angeles neighbourhood, controversially cleared of residents?
Chavez Ravine
Chavez Ravine: most families had been moved out in the early 1950s for a public housing project that was never built, and sheriff's deputies evicted the last holdouts in May 1959.
Q 10As of 2025, Dodger Stadium is MLB's third-oldest ballpark, behind Wrigley Field and which other?
Fenway Park
Fenway Park (1912) and Wrigley Field (1914) are the only older homes, so every big-league park opened in the 48 years between Wrigley and Dodger Stadium has since dropped out of the majors.
Q 11Which other major league team shared Dodger Stadium from 1962 to 1965?
The Angels
The Angels, a 1961 expansion club, paid the Dodgers rent for four seasons, but feared they would never build a following as tenants and left for their own park in Anaheim in 1966.
Q 12Sandy Koufax threw his 1965 perfect game against which team?
The Cubs
The Cubs: Chicago's Bob Hendley allowed only one hit and two baserunners himself that night, yet lost 1-0 because the Dodgers' single run was unearned.
Q 13Why did Sandy Koufax decline to start Game 1 of the 1965 World Series?
It fell on Yom Kippur
Q 21Before baseball, Kirk Gibson was an All-American in which sport at Michigan State?
Football
Football: Gibson was an All-American wide receiver, and the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals drafted him in the seventh round in 1979, but he stuck with baseball.
Q 22Which Dodgers pitcher, nicknamed 'Bulldog' by Tommy Lasorda, threw a record 59 straight scoreless innings in 1988?
Orel Hershiser
Orel Hershiser got the name because Lasorda thought he was too timid on the mound and gave hitters too much respect; the streak broke a record set by another Dodger, Don Drysdale.
Q 23Tommy Lasorda's United States team won baseball gold at the 2000 Olympics by beating which favoured country?
Cuba
It fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, so Don Drysdale started instead and was pulled early in a loss; Koufax came back to win Games 5 and 7 by shutout.
Q 14Sandy Koufax's record of four no-hitters was broken in 1981 by which pitcher?
Nolan Ryan
Nolan Ryan threw his fifth no-hitter on 26 September 1981 against, of all teams, the Dodgers, and went on to finish his career with seven.
Q 15Don Drysdale set a modern National League record for what?
Most batters hit by a pitch
Most batters hit by a pitch: Drysdale threw inside to intimidate and plunked 154 hitters; Orlando Cepeda said the trick was 'to hit him before he hits you'.
Q 16Which broadcasting legend mentored the young Vin Scully in Brooklyn?
Red Barber
Red Barber, the Dodgers' lead voice, recommended the 22-year-old Scully for a place in the booth in 1950; Scully later said Barber 'had the greatest influence on my working life'.
Q 17Which Dodgers manager won four World Series while working on 23 consecutive one-year contracts?
Walter Alston
Walter Alston got the job for 1954 only because his predecessor, Chuck Dressen, had demanded a multi-year contract and been shown the door.
Q 18In 1981 Fernando Valenzuela became the first to win which two awards in one year?
Rookie of the Year and Cy Young
Rookie of the Year and Cy Young: Valenzuela only started Opening Day because Jerry Reuss was hurt the day before, then won his first eight starts, five of them shutouts.
Q 19Which rare pitch, taught to him by a Dodgers teammate, made Fernando Valenzuela a sensation in 1981?
Screwball
Screwball: reliever Bobby Castillo taught it to him before the 1980 season because a scout felt he lacked an off-speed pitch, and it broke the opposite way to a curveball.
Q 20Kirk Gibson's famous 1988 World Series homer came off which Oakland closer?
Dennis Eckersley
Dennis Eckersley threw a backdoor slider on 3-2, just as a Dodgers scouting report had promised; the injured Gibson stepped out, recalled the tip, and hit the pitch out to win the game.
Cuba had won every Olympic baseball gold medal awarded until then, but Lasorda's Americans shut them out 4-0 in the Sydney final.
Q 24The elbow operation first performed on a Dodgers pitcher in 1974 is named after which player?
Tommy John
Tommy John: Dr Frank Jobe gave the untried ligament transplant 100-to-1 odds, yet John came back to win 164 more games.
Q 25Why does Shohei Ohtani's $700 million Dodgers contract pay him only $2 million a year?
Most is deferred
Most is deferred: Ohtani takes $2 million a year while he plays out the deal and collects the other $680 million only from 2034 to 2043.
Q 26Shohei Ohtani founded baseball's 50-50 club in 2024 with 54 home runs and 59 of what?
Stolen bases
Stolen bases: he passed 50 of each in the same game, going 6-for-6 with three homers, two steals and 10 RBIs, in a season when elbow surgery kept him from pitching.
Q 27Which Lakers legend is a partner in the group that bought the Dodgers for a then-record $2.15 billion in 2012?
Magic Johnson
Magic Johnson joined Guggenheim Baseball Management, which bought the Dodgers out of bankruptcy for more than any sports franchise had ever fetched.
Q 28Which Dodgers starter got the final three outs of the 2024 World Series?
Walker Buehler
Walker Buehler volunteered to pitch on one day's rest, struck out the last two Yankees and earned the first save of his major league career.
Q 29Dodgers pitcher Andy Messersmith's 1975 challenge to baseball's reserve clause opened the door to what?
Free agency
Free agency: Messersmith pitched all of 1975 without signing a contract, and an arbitrator then ruled that the reserve clause no longer bound him to the Dodgers.
Q 30Freddie Freeman joined the Dodgers in 2022 months after winning the World Series with which team?
Atlanta Braves
Atlanta Braves: Atlanta's offer reportedly stopped at five years while Freeman held out for a sixth, so he took six years and $162 million from the Dodgers instead.