Edward Thoma: Thoma column | A deceptively difficult but Immaculate challenge
Aug. 14—If there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there are 50 ways to be a baseball fan. The Immaculate Grid is a new one on my list, and my current obsession.
It's a great outlet for those who view baseball history as more than the superstars and championship teams, who are as interested in the stories of Butts Wagner and Vince DiMaggio as in their superstar brothers Honus and Joe.
On the Grid, the journeyman who bounces from team to team is more valuable than the franchise icon who spends his entire career with one team. The lousy team that repeatedly shuffles its roster is a better source for answers than the championship caliber squad that keeps its core together.
I fully expect that by season's end I will have committed to memory all 14 teams for whom Edwin Jackson pitched — and even more likely the 13 teams of LaTroy Hawkins. Those guys (as well as Octavio Dotel and Rich Hill) are virtual cheat codes for the Grid.
For the uninitiated, the Immaculate Grid is basically Wordle for baseball junkies — three rows and three columns intersecting, with teams, awards or statistical milestones assigned to each. The challenge is to accurately fill each of the nine squares with a player without error.
Sunday's grid (a new game is posted each morning) had for the columns the Royals, the Dodgers, and a .300 batting average for the season. The rows were the Angels, the Tigers and the Brewers.
There were literally dozens of correct answers for each space — 166 men have played for both the Tigers and the Dodgers over the decades — but more than half of the entries had at least one error. Less than half could identify someone who played for both the Royals and Tigers. (Dotel would have worked; Jackson and Hawkins would not.)
It is my impression from social media that most of us are playing on the honor system, at least for the first play. (You can get multiple tries at the grid by changing device or browser.) That's certainly my approach — try to fill the grid without looking anybody up.
Once I've done that, I start researching. Or peeking.
How low a rarity score can I rack up? (The game monitors the frequency of picks — a correct answer that few enter lowers the rarity score, and some aficionados take great pride in getting a rarity score in the teens or even single digits.) I've worked out, with some peeking, perfect grids that have nine former Twins, grids with rarity scores in single digits, grids that are all pitchers, grids that are all Hall of Famers.
While writing this, I filled out Sunday's grid with nine Twins/Senators. But I had to do some serious cheating for three of the spaces, so I'm hardly bragging about that result.
Sports Reference, which purchased the game weeks after it entered my consciousness, also offers versions for football, basketball and hockey. I've looked at them and quickly abandoned all hope.
The baseball version is humbling enough.
Edward Thoma is at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com and @bboutsider.
