The daily challenge and pleasure of Immaculate Grid

For roughly a year running, I played Wordle _ The New York Times’ puzzle _ virtually every day. And then along came Immaculate Grid, a daily sports challenge from Baseball Reference, one of my go-to sources for information on baseball players and their stats.

Throughout July and August, I stopped playing Wordle and instead got hooked on Immaculate Grid, which in a matrix format challenges you to identify players who have played for two specific major-league teams or met certain criteria, such as 30 or more stolen bases in a season or 20 or more victories pitching.

I like Immaculate Grid because it not only challenges me but it also dredges up pleasant memories of players whom I’ve followed and admired over several decades. The daily puzzle has also punctured any pretense I had about being extremely knowledgeable about players and their careers.

Despite my having lived in several MLB markets, Immaculate Grid has exposed many blind spots in my knowledge of leagues and teams. I’m woefully weak with any puzzle that involves the Tampa Bay Rays or the Miami Marlins. On the latter, I can usually only recall Giancarlo Stanton and Craig Counsell as having played there. I’m also surprisingly weak on the Angels the last couple of years. Once I get past Dean Chance and Jim Fregosi, I’m pretty much lost (Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout and and Brandon Marsh not withstanding).

I’m old enough that when I see the curly W for Washington, I think Senators first (Ken McMullen, e.g.) and Nationals second.

If I’m stumped on a block, I will use Google in situations where I should reasonably know the answer, such as who played for the Giants and Padres. If I see a name and say _ oh, right, I remember that! _ I’ll fill in the square. If not, I won’t. Occasionally I’ll have a notion and ask Google to bring up the roster of a team from a certain year, say the Indians in 1967 or the Red Sox in 1986, to prod my memory.

The grid topping this post was from early this week, and it was my best effort to date, completely unaided by Google searching. You can tell from the photo that my knowledge is deep in the late 60s and the 70s. I never saw Ted Kluszewski play, but I remember my dad mentioning him and I’ve seen photos showing his bulging biceps.

Immaculate Grid has expanded with NFL, NBA, WNBA, NHL and Soccer challenges, which is great but my chances most days are wretched. In the basketball and soccer puzzles, I can’t recognize better than half the logos. I check them each day and occasionally wade into the football and hockey challenges but almost always give up.

One thing I wish IG would offer is a grid with NFL players and colleges. I’d love to see the 49ers and Mississippi Valley State some day! (Spoiler alert: Jerry Rice).

I’ve resumed Wordle, but baseball remains my true love. I’m very glad that Immaculate Grid is here to rekindle some old romances, as it were, and to remind me to pay a bit more attention to the peripatetic nature of MLB players in this free agent era.