3,000 hits and one right answer.

Last night my friend Fran and I went to meet some people she knew from work for Trivia Night at a local bar and grill. Ah, how it made me nostalgic for trivia at the Windber Hotel, when you weren't sure if the amazing dish you had last week would be awful the next week and Melis kept trying beers hoping to find one similar to what we drank at Oktoberfest and we crammed on current events and Eric became more and more infuriated that half the pink Christmas lights were burned out. I miss those days.

In the middle of round 2, they hit us with a sports question: “What baseball player had exactly 3,000 hits when his career was cut short?” Oh my stars and garters. I knew it. I knew a sports question. And not even, like, an Olympic question or a “sports question” that is actually a movie question like “Who did Lawrence Taylor play in Any Given Sunday?” This was a real, actual sports question. And the three men at the table didn't have a clue. But I had a clue. I had recently watched a documentary program on this man with Dad and Uncle Jimmy and I remembered Dad telling me about those 3,000 hits.

At first I couldn't remember his name, so I hissed at the self-declared “sports expert” at the table, “It’s that guy! That guy who has a bridge in Pittsburgh named after him! The bridge with the blue lights!” My teammate looked at me blankly. Undeterred, I went on. “That guy who was a Pittsburgh Pirate and he was Puerto Rican and he was taking humanitarian supplies to Nicaragua and his plane crashed.” More blank stares.

Now, I think if you can’t pull Clemente's name from that pile of info, you are no “sports expert,” but it seemed impolitic to point that out to a man I had only met 20 minutes ago. I like people to know me for a least a week before they realize I am insufferable.

I knew I was on my own, so I closed my eyes and thought about that beautiful bridge and Clemente's name finally came to me. Then I resolved to call everyone I know, especially my boy cousins, and tell them I had answered a sports question that had stumped three actual men, but I settled for posting it on Facebook because I am lazy and that is a lot of calls to make.

We had a good night, but the round that destroyed us was the pictorial quiz of obscure beer logos. Fran and I don’t really drink, but I thought the three guys would have this covered. Then they dropped it on me: all three were Mormons from Utah. They could tell me all about the show Sister Wives but not a lick about beer. Alas.

We ended up coming in third. Next time, Gadget. Next time.