Personal Trivia Baseball is an icebreaker game that involves guessing facts of various difficulty levels to obtain singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. This game helps people discover facts about each other in a fun way.
This get-to-know-you game is played with two teams of about six to eight people each. The recommended location for this game is indoors. Materials required are: several sheets of paper and pens. Personal Trivia Baseball is playable by ages 10 and up, including college students and adults in corporate settings.
Setup for Personal Trivia Baseball
This game should be played with two teams. Divide the players into two teams of about six to eight people — other team sizes are possible but less ideal, as the game may be too short or too long. You can increase or decrease the number of sheets accordingly, depending on how long you want the game to last.
To prepare for the game, pass out four sheets and a pen to each player. Instruct each person to write “S” on the first sheet, “D” on the second, “T” on the third, and “HR” on , the fourth. These letters stand for single, double, triple, and home run, respectively. On each of these sheets, each person writes an interesting fact about themselves. Do not write any names on the sheets, because the goal of the game is to guess whose fact is written on each sheet. The fact written on the single (“S”) sheet should be the easiest to guess; the double (“D”) sheet should be a little harder to figure out; the triple (“T”) even harder; and the home run (“HR”) should be the hardest.
Once everyone is finished writing their clues, collect them and sort them into four piles per team: singles, doubles, triples, home run. Shuffle all the papers and arrange the piles into four different corners of the room, in the shape of a baseball diamond (see image below).
Playing Personal Trivia Baseball
The way Personal Trivia Baseball is played is similar to normal baseball rules. Each team has three “outs” per inning and tries to score as many runs as they can. On a turn, a player chooses to go for a single (easiest), double, triple, or home run (most difficult). He or she picks a sheet from the other team’s piles, reads it, and then guesses which of the people on the other team wrote the fact. Once he or she makes a guess, the guessed person on the other team simply says “yes” or “no”. If the guess is correct, the person successfully gets on base with a single, double, triple, or home run and moves to that part of the room. If the guess is incorrect, then the team adds another “out”. Move on to the next batter and repeat until there are three outs. Once there are three outs, change to the other team and repeat. Keep track of the number of runs each team has scored.
Keep playing until all the clues are revealed, or for a shorter game, set a time limit or a set number of innings. The winner is the team with the higher score at the end.
