The Stanley Cup travels more than 100,000 miles a year, making it the best-traveled championship trophy in the world. Misadventures:

• In 1905, the Ottawa Silver Seven tried to drop-kick it over the Rideau Canal on the Ottawa River. (They failed.)
• In 1906, it went missing after a photography session. It turned out the photographer’s mother had adopted it as a planter for geraniums.
• In 1924, the Montreal Canadiens left it by the side of the road while changing a tire.
• In 1940, managers burned the mortgage of Madison Square Garden in the cup, which the Rangers won that year. (This occasioned a “curse” that kept the Rangers from the cup for 54 years.)
• In 1980, New York Islander Clark Gillies fed his dog from it.
• In 1991, Pittsburgh Penguin Mario Lemieux tried to float it in his swimming pool. It sank. (Colorado Avalanche goalkeeper Patrick Roy later did the same thing.)
• In 1994, Ranger Ed Olczyk filled it with oats to feed Kentucky Derby winner Go for Gin.
• In 1996, Avalanche defenseman Sylvain Lefebvre had his daughter baptized in it.

Plus untold numbers have slept with it and urinated in it — one hopes in that order.

Take two pieces of string or tape, and round the wrists of two persons tie the string, as shown in Fig. 19. It adds to the amusement of the puzzle if one of the persons is a lady and the other a gentleman. The puzzle is for them to liberate themselves, or for any one else to release them without untying the string. To do this, B makes a loop of his string pass under either of A’s manacles, slips it over A’s hands, and both will be free. Reverse the proceeding, and the manacles are again as before.

— Cassell’s Book of In-Door Amusements, Card Games and Fireside Fun, 1882

Humphrey Bogart was an expert chess player. Here’s a 1951 game he played with Lauren Bacall — she had black:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 g6 4. d3 d5 5. exd5 Qxd5 6. c4 Bb4+ 7. Nc3 Bxc3+ 8. bxc3 Qd6 9. a4 Bd7 10. Ba3 Qf6 11. Qe2 Nge7 12. Bxe7 Qxe7 13. Bxc6 Bxc6 14. Nxe5 Bxg2 15. Rg1 Bh3 16. Rg3 Be6 17. d4 c6 18. d5 cxd5 19. cxd5 Bxd5 20. c4 Be6 21. Re3 f6 22. Nd3 Kf7 23. Nf4 Rae8 24. Nxe6 Qb4+ 25. Kf1 Re7 26. Re1 Rhe8

27. Nd8+ Kf8 28. Rxe7 Rxe7 29. Qxe7+ Qxe7 30. Rxe7 Kxe7 31. Nxb7 1-0

There’s no record of her reaction.

Arriving home early one day, Yogi Berra asked his wife where she’d been that afternoon.

She said she’d taken their son to see Doctor Zhivago.

Berra said, “What the hell’s wrong with him now?”

Catcher Moe Berg earned his reputation as “the brainiest guy in baseball.” At Princeton, where he studied seven languages, he communicated plays in Latin with the second baseman, and he later attended Columbia Law School and the Sorbonne while reading 10 newspapers a day. After 15 undistinguished seasons as a ballplayer, he went to work as a spy during World War II, parachuting into Yugoslavia for the Office of Strategic Services and interviewing Italian physicists about the German nuclear program. (He chose not to shoot Werner Heisenberg.) His is the only baseball card on display at CIA headquarters.

Berg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1945, but he spent the last 20 years of his life living quietly with siblings. He declined to write a memoir, so much of his life is still a mystery. When asked why he had “wasted” his intellectual gifts on baseball, he said, “I’d rather be a ballplayer than a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.” His final words were “How did the Mets do today?”