In 1968, long before he became a famous television announcer, Brent Musberger was a writer for the Chicago American. That year, he wrote a column decrying “a couple of black-skinned storm troopers,” referring to them as “ignoble,” “juvenile,” and “unimaginative.” Name either of the men he was writing about.

In response to the effectiveness of the neutral zone trap, in 2005 the NHL ordered its officials to call every obstruction penalty, and removed the longstanding prohibition on what offensive tactic?

At the 1987 Ryder Cup in Ohio, Team Europe won a 15—13 victory—the first win on U.S. soil for the visitors in the 60 years of the competition. Of the 12 players on that team, five would go on to captain victorious European Ryder Cup teams between 1997 and 2012. Name two of those five, and note that Nick Faldo is the only member of the team to have captained and lost. (Incidentally, five players from the American team would go on to captain a Ryder Cup side, resulting in just one victory.)

Many English football clubs featured paid players long before it was officially allowed, and the Football Association formally assented in July 1885 and legalized professional play. Name the club that won the first two F.A. Cups of the professional era...and had, in fact, won the two before. As of 2020, this club competes in England’s second-highest domestic league, the EFL Championship.

These are the saddest of possible words:
“_______________________________”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
_______________________________
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“_______________________________”

In this poem, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” written in 1910 by Franklin Pierce Adams, a New York Giants fan rues a specific combination he has seen time and again on the diamond. What three names appear in each of the blank lines above?