Another day, another hilariously wrong Jeopardy! answer. Host Alex Trebek lobbed up a meatball Wednesday night, but Xiaoke Ying couldn’t hit the high cheese.
Presented with a $1,000 clue in the category “Unique College Courses”—only appropriate given that Jeopardy! is waging its annual College Championship this week—the sophomore business major from USC buzzed in, naming Babe Ruth as the player who famously broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Of course, the correct response, submitted seconds later by Nathaniel Miller of Yale University, was Brooklyn Dodgers great Jackie Robinson. In fact, Wednesday marked the 73rd anniversary of Robinson’s landmark debut in the major leagues.
Whether she had a momentary brain cramp or baseball trivia is Ying’s blind spot, that clue—on Jackie Robinson Day no less—should have been a BP fastball down the middle. All her opponent Marshall Comeaux could do was shake his head in disgust.
Ying struck out on that particular question, but luckily it all worked out for her in the end. A little Twitter ridicule is nothing compared to $8,200, the amount Ying netted as Wednesday night’s champ. She won in convincing fashion too, besting runner-up Miller by a colossal $7,200 margin. Ying will look to defend her title Thursday against the University of Minnesota’s Nibir Sarma and Tyler Combs of Indiana University.
MLB wasn’t able to hold its usual Jackie Robinson Day festivities with the sport on hiatus, though the league cleverly alluded to him on its website Wednesday, listing all players with Robinson’s iconic No. 42.
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