- In a typical season major league baseball will require 4,800 ash trees worth of Louisville sluggers.
- Steve McPeak built and rode a unicycle that was ten stories tall. The greatest skill was not in riding the machine, but in building it so that the chains would not fall off the sprockets.
- The first perfect game in baseball history was achieved by John Lee Richmond on June 12, 1880.
- The ancient American Indian game of lacrosse involved teams of up to 1,000 players.
- Until the 1870s, baseball was played without the use of gloves.
- The modern Olympic Games were held in the first time in 1896 at Athens and were then followed by the 1900 Paris games. The winter games were added in 1924.
- The game of volleyball was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan.
- In 1905, 18 men died from injuries sustained on the football field. President Theodore Roosevelt stepped in and instituted safety measures to make the game safer.
- Most tennis injuries actually happen after the game when the winner tries to jump over the net.
- In 1985, Pete Rose became the first professional athlete to appear on the front of a Wheaties box.
- Until 1967 it wasn't illegal for Olympic athletes to use drugs to enhance their performance during competition.
- The Major League Baseball teams use about 850,000 balls per season.
- The earliest recorded Olympic Games result was from the 180 meter sprint in the 776 B.C. The winner was a man named Coroebus.
- On February 6, 1971 the first golf ball was hit on the moon by Alan Shepard.
- The largest baseball card collection, 200,000 cards, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- A spectator sport in Rome 2,300 years ago was called Cestus. Slaves were given gloves covered with spikes and told to fight each other. The winner's reward: life.
- A baseball ball has exactly 108 stitches, a cricket ball has between 65 and 70 stiches.
- A soccer ball has 32 panels around it.
- Baseball rules were codified in 1846 by Alexander Cartwright of the Knickerbocker Baseball Club.
- The best matadors in Peru used to be women.
- The world's first roller coaster opened in 1884 at Coney Island, New York. It was designed by Lemarcus Thompson, a former Sunday school teacher.
- The early golf balls were not made from zillions of rubber bands. They were feather-stuffed leather balls.
- Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith. He set out to invent a game to occupy students between the football and baseball seasons.
- The most common injury in bowling is a sore thumb.
- There are 1,929,770,126,028,800 different color combinations possible on a Rubik's Cube.
- A soccer ball is made up of 32 leather panels, held together by 642 stitches.
- One guy ran the 100-yard dash in 14 seconds, not a spectacular time, but he did it running backwards.
- Golfers use an estimated $800 million worth of golf balls annually.
- The first reference to a monetary prize in a horse race was offered by Richard I in 1195.
- The baseball home plate is about 17 inches wide.
- There are 100 tiles in a 'Scrabble' crossword game.
- In 1970, 127 runners ran the NY Marathon. In 1998, 32,000 did.
- A Russian ballet dancer named Vaslav Nijinsky could jump into the air and cross and uncross his legs ten times before landing. No one has been able to duplicate this feat. Try it.
- The board game Monopoly was originally rejected by Parker Brothers, who claimed it had 52 fundamental errors.
- The Ouija board is named for the French and German words for yes - oui and ja.
- More than 100 million people hold hunting licences.
- The first Rose Bowl game was held in 1902 in Pasadena, California. The University of Michigan beat Sanford 49-0.
- When tennis was first invented in 1874, it was called sphairistike.
- Jerry West was the model for the official NBA logo. His silhouette appears dribbling a basketball.
- In playing poker, there is one chance in 500 of drawing a flush.
- Jean Genevieve Garnerin was the first female parachutists, jumping from a hot air balloon in 1799.
- The first black player in the American League was Larry Doby with the Cleveland Indians in 1947.
- When volleyball was first invented in 1895, it was called mintonette.
- The Montreal Canadians of the mid-1950s are the only team to win five straight Stanley Cup championships.
- The first triple jump in figure skating competition was performed by Dick Button in 1952.
- In 1975 Junko Tabei from Japan became the first woman to reach the top of Everest.
- You have a greater chance of injury playing volleyball than football. This is because in volleyball it is easy to accidentally smash into your opponent through the net.
- The first pick (by Eagles) in the first NFL draft in 1935, was Jay Berwanger from the University of Chicago. He never played in the league
- The Olympic Games were held in St. Louis, MO. In 1904, the first time that the games were held in the United States.
- Bowlers are allowed to have a maximum of five finger grip holes on a regulation bowling ball.
- The record for the most Olympic medals ever won is held by Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina. Competing in three Olympics, between 1956 and 1964, she won 18 medals.
- In 1898, one of the first programmes to be broadcasted on radio was a yacht race that took place in British waters.
- The first players elected to Baseball Hall of Fame were Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson & Walter Johnson in 1936.
- The Vince Lombardi Trophy is awarded to the winners of the Super Bowl.
- The 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles was the first time the three-level winner's stand was used for the medal ceremony.
- Miniature golf was originally called Tom Thumb Golf.
- The record for the most major league Bbaseball career innings is held by Cy Young, with 7,356 innings.
- Parker Brothers was founded by George Swinerton Parker, 18, in 1885. The first game produced was 'Banking,' in which the player who amasses the most wealth is the winner.
- There are 2,598,960 five-card hands possible in a 52-card deck of cards.
- The first cover of "Sports Illustrated," in 1954, showed National League umpire, Augie Donatelli, behind the plate with two major-league stars: catcher Wes Westrum, and batter Eddie Matthews.
- Muhammad Ali won his heavyweight championships on three continents: North America, Asia and Africa.
- In Europe "football" means "soccer".
- Sports command the biggest television audiences, led by the summer Olympics, World Cup soccer and Formula One racing.
- There are nine rooms on a 'Clue' game board. A forfeited baseball game is recorded as a 9-0 score.
- First Instant Replay was used during Army Navy Football Game at Municipal Stadium Philadelphia on December 7, 1963, invented by Tony Verna (CBS Director.)
- Moses Malone was the first basketball player to go directly from high school to a professional American team.
- The guy who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1915 had to get out and push his broken car for more than the last mile of the race.
- The very first Olympic race, held in 776 BC, was won by Corubus, a chef.
- The dimensions of a regulation football field are: 360 feet long and 160 feet wide.
- Olympic badminton rules say that the bird has to have exactly fourteen feathers.
- Sometimes boxers apply live leeches to their black eyes. This sucks out the blood from the crushed tissue, evidently lessening the blackness, or promoting healing.
- In July 1934, Babe Ruth paid the fan who caught his 700th career home run ball $20 to get it back.
- The annual White House Easter egg-roll was started by President Hayes in 1878.
- The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece in 1896. There were 311 male but no female competitors.
- The first Kentucky Derby was run at Churchill Downs in 1875 with Aristides as winner.
- Martina Hingis is the highest paid sportswomen.
- Only six baseball teams remain from the original National League, which was founded in 1876.
- Some unique research discovered that four out of every five boxers have sustained brain damage.
- The high jump method of jumping head first and landing on the back is called the Fosbury Flop.
- The first NBA player to score 38,000 points was Kareem Abdul-Jabar in 1989.
- The distance between the pitcher's rubber and home plate in baseball is 60 feet, 6 inches.
- Basketball and rugby balls are made from synthetic material. Earlier, pigs' bladders were used as rugby balls.
- The high jump method of jumping head first and landing on the back is called the Fosbury Flop.
- With one pitch, Babe Ruth could throw two balls simultaneously, and they would stay parallel all the way to the catcher.
- Bullfrog Dietrich of the Chicago White Sox was the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter while wearing eyeglasses. He did it in 1937.
- The first Soccer World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930 and attracted 13 competing countries.
- About 42,000 tennis balls are used in the plus-minus 650 matches in the Wimbledon Championship.
- The motto for the Olympic Games is Citius - Altius - Fortius. Translated, it means Faster - Higher - Stronger.
- A research study found that out of forty typical umpires tested, twelve needed new glasses.
- The first Super Bowl was played in 1967. The Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, 35-to-10.
- Baseball players have the longest lives of all occupations.
- Reggie Jackson holds the major league record for most strikeouts with 2,597.
- When you hit a baseball really hard, it momentarily changes shape by as much as 25 percent.
- The oiuja board was invented by Isaac and William Fuld, and was patented July 1, 1892.
- When Henry Aaron hit his 715th Home Run, breaking Babe Ruth's record, the pitcher who served it up was Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were both wearing number 44.
- It costs $66 per minute for the electricity to light a large baseball stadium. That's $3,960 per hour.
- Paul Hornung holds the NFL record for the most points in a single season. He scored 176 points in 1960.
- Wild Bill Hickok was killed playing poker, holding two pairs - aces and eights, which has become known as 'Dead Man's Hand.'
- The average American spends over $80 per year on sporting equipment.
- The first professional football team to sport an insignia on their helmets was the Los Angeles Rams in 1950, who hand painted yellow horns on their blue leather helmets.
- Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
- The longest tandem or "bicycle built for two" ever made was actually for thirty-five. It is almost 67 feet long and weighs about as much as a Volkswagen.
- NASCAR stands for National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing.
- Eddie Arcaro, one of the greatest jockeys in horse race history, rode 250 losers before he won his first race. Ultimately, Arcaro won 4,779 races - including five Derby winners, six in the Preakness, and six in the Belmont Stakes, on such famous horses as Whirlaway, Citation, and Kelso.
- The smallest bicycle that an adult can ride has wheels made from silver dollars.
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