Last week I learned that Pie Traynor was born in Framingham.

It’s always fun to come across something like that about where I live.

I guess he didn’t live here long - I read he got the nickname ‘Pie’ from a shop in Somerville, and his Baseball Reference page says he attended Somerville High School, and this is back in the early 1900s, so it’s not like he was commuting from here to there easily. (It’s a 40-minute or so drive with today’s technology.)

I knew Pie Traynor was a Hall of Fame baseball player, but then I thought, if I had to explain this fact to someone else would I even know anything else about him to say who he was? So I spent some time studying up.

And then the next morning on the Immaculate Grid, there was the “Only One Team” category matched up with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I had a new answer besides Roberto Clemente.

Unfortunately, this is what I think I’ll be this baseball off-season - someone who is trying to learn more about my baseball blind spots.

Which brings us to Heinie Manusch. I was stumped by a Twins clue not long after the lucky Pirates square, so I explored who I could have put there and one name stood out above the rest, perhaps for obvious reasons.

So I looked into Heinie - he played for a lot of teams - among them Detroit, Boston, Minnesota (before they were Minnesota), and Baltimore (before they were Baltimore). He’s another Hall of Famer. I’ll be using him quite a bit moving forward as well.

I guess there are worse things to be learning about than baseball.

As I was looking up these early 20th century guys I thought of Rogers Hornsby. A name I definitely always knew, but not a guy I knew a lot about. I always thought he was just a lifetime Cardinal, but when I looked at his page he played for a lot of teams, at a time when not a lot of guys played for that many teams.

So I started exploring why - and the answer is mostly gambling and temper.

I know a good amount of baseball. I have little gaps from recent years when life was busy with the kids and I didn’t follow the sport as closely. (I always regret that I didn’t watch a ton of the great 2011 World Series. Maybe hardly any of it.)

But I know close to nothing about, I don’t know, pre-1925? I don’t need to know it…but it might be fun to have some backup information to throw into the grid.

So I’ll study up some this off-season.

And at the very least maybe I’ll discover another guy who was born in Framingham.