Saturday Teaser Curio #62: Just One More Baseball Game

Congratulations to the Chicago Cubs! In honor of their dramatic and historic victory, here's a baseball brain teaser to keep the baseball juices flowing (ummm, that's brain juices, not steroid juices):

This year, Ace Alonzo, Blazin' Boone, and Cruisin' Callahan played for the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, and Boston Red Sox in some combination. Can you figure out which teams they each played for?

Here are some things that happened this season:

• Cruisin' Callahan once struck out Blazin' Boone on three pitches.
• Ace Alonzo never wanted to be a Lovable Loser so never played for them.
• Cruisin' Callahan played for a team from the capital city of its state.
• Blazin' Boone never had any games at Progressive Field.
• Cruisin' Callahan had a special clause in his contract that let him only play home games, which means he got to sleep in his tree house fort in his childhood oak tree every night of the whole season.
• Ace Alonzo had spring training at Goodyear Ballpark.
• Cruisin' Callahan was covering first base when he got an out by catching a throw from Ace Alonzo.
• Blazin' Boone had one favorite baseball cap that he wore for every game.

So, what do you think? Which teams did Alonzo, Boone, and Callahan play for?

Warning! This is trickier than it seems...

Ready for the answer?

So this is trickier than it seems because the players could not have only played for one team each. Let's walk through the clues (in a slightly different order) and see what we get:

1. Ace Alonzo had spring training at Goodyear Ballpark. => That's the spring training facility for Cleveland, so Ace played for the Indians.
2. Cruisin' Callahan played for a team from the capital city of its state. => Of the three teams, only Boston is the capital of its state, so Cruisin' played for the Red Sox.
3. Cruisin' Callahan had a special clause in his contract that let him only play home games, which means he got to sleep in his tree house fort in his childhood oak tree every night of the whole season. => This is a really long way of saying that he only played for the Red Sox and no other teams.
4. Blazin' Boone never had any games at Progressive Field. => Blazin' didn't play for the Indians.
5. Cruisin' Callahan once struck out Blazin' Boone on three pitches. => Because Cruisin' played for the Red Sox, and Blazin' didn't play for the Indians, he must have played for the Cubs.
6. Cruisin' Callahan was covering first base when he got an out by catching a throw from Ace Alonzo. => At some point, Cruisin' and Ace were on the same team. This means, Ace at one point played for the Red Sox (and at another point, the Indians, per Clue #1). If you got an answer where each player only played on different teams, you could not have satisfied this clue.
7. Ace Alonzo never wanted to be a Lovable Loser so never played for them. => So he never played for the Cubs.
8. Blazin' Boone had one favorite baseball cap that he wore for every game. => Again, a way of saying that he only played for one team, the Cubs from Clue #5 above.

Whew! This all means that Ace played for the Indians and Red Sox, Blazin' played for the Cubs, and Cruisin' played for the Red Sox.

And congratulations to all Cubs fans!