On May 26, 1959, Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates retired the first 36 batters he faced. Twelve innings, not one man reaching base, against a lineup with Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews in it. Then he lost the game. In the 13th, a throwing error behind him put a runner on, and the Pirates went home 1-0. The night is not in the record book either: a perfect game is defined over nine innings, so twelve of them in a row counts as neither a perfect game nor a no-hitter.
Baseball is full of things like this. Every ball used in a Major League game is rubbed with mud before the first pitch - not one comes out of the box and goes straight to the mound. Inside the left field wall at Fenway Park, three people still sit in the dark and change the score by hand. In 2024, a swarm of bees settled in at a ballpark and pushed first pitch back two hours; the man who finally cleared them had stepped away from his own son's game to get there.
This app turns stories like those into three-choice questions. The only ones that made the cut are the ones that make you say it out loud the moment the answer lands.
A round fits in a coffee break
Five questions to a stage, about thirty seconds each. No background required. Read it, get surprised, move on. On the train or in the last few minutes before bed, you always stop at a clean break.
The answer is not the end of it
Every question comes with an explanation, and the explanation has its own turn. Haddix's game, the three people behind the wall - the best part of both comes after you have already answered.
Built for newcomers and for people who know the game
Three levels: Rookie, All-Star, and Hall of Fame. Rookie skips player names and jargon entirely - animals, mud, insects, people hidden inside a wall, questions you can picture. If you already know the game, start at Hall of Fame.
Records, rules, people, and pure chaos
Career records with unexpected names on them. Why the infield fly rule had to be invented. The pitcher who threw a perfect game and later took a seat in the U.S. Senate. The strangest afternoons ballparks have ever had. Topics are spread out on purpose, so no single subject takes over.
When the well-known explanation turns out to be wrong
Left-handers are called southpaws because ballparks faced west. A tie goes to the runner. Both get repeated like settled fact, and both fall apart when you look them up. On questions like these, the debunked answer is the correct one.
Works with no signal
Every question lives inside the app. Subways, planes, basements - open it without thinking about your connection.
Read it in another language
Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, French, and more. The same question in a different language often lands in a different way.
Sourced and checked
Everything here actually happened. Questions are written from Hall of Fame records, SABR research, the Official Baseball Rules, and contemporary reporting. Where a story survives as legend or folklore rather than documented fact, the explanation says so. Nothing unverified is presented as the right answer.
Good fit if you
- watch baseball but have never heard what goes on behind it
- enjoy finding out how an unfamiliar world actually works
- want a story worth repeating to someone
- are looking for something you can pick up and put down cleanly
Ballparks have been keeping stories for well over a century, and plenty of them are still going around unheard. You will want to pass the first one along before you reach the second.
He retired 36 straight batters over 12 innings, lost, and got no record for it.