1.  Who is Velarde?

2.  You are right, Bob. The board is yours.

3.  Showing my work.

These are all players from 1996 NL West teams

Edmonds (8) - Salmon (9) - Velarde (4) - Angels
McGwire (3) - Bordick (6) - Brosius (5) - A's
Rodriguez (2) - Greer (7) - Hill (1) - Rangers

I will take "6th Degree Quotes" for 800

4.  I meant AL West teams.

5.  Thanks for the explanation, Bob. I was sitting here thinking it had something to do with 1998. (notice i have zero points, heh)

6.  The Score Bard must have really liked the 1996 season.

Or hated the Mariners!

7.  Nah, I was just looking for a season where you could logically narrow it down to a single season. A lot of those teams have the same players several years in a row. 1996 was the first one I found, so I used it.

As for picking those three teams, I just thought it was kinda cute that Velarde played for all three of them in his career.

8.  I was thinking it was the final digit of their rookie seasons, which having started with the A's and Angels, worked (McGwire - 6, Bordick - 0, Brosius - 1, Salmon 2, Edmonds - 3, Greer - 4) until I got to Rodriguez who doubled with Brosius 1991 and Ken Hill didn't come up with Texas. Then I realized that 0 isn't one of the numbers involved in these puzzles. Oh well, it was interesting how far I got with that.

9.  The weird thing is that I've never even tried a real Sudoku puzzle in my life. Just the ones here.

10.  I think you'd like an actual Sudoku puzzle, Bob - not always as challenging as some of the Humbugardy questions, err, answers, but the logical thought process required is similar. Minus the baseball component, of course. They're a good way to relax, IMHO.