RiverDogs Honour Trivial Pursuit, Seinfeld as Moops

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the board game Trivial Pursuit, but that fact alone wasn’t enough for one minor league team to honor the game’s contribution to our cultural lexicon. The Charleston RiverDogs are going one level further down the rabbit hole, and will play a game referencing a reference to the game.

The RiverDogs will play as the Charleston Moops, a word popularized in the iconic “Bubble Boy” episode of Seinfeld, in which George Costanza, out of spite, denies a belligerent child in a protective plastic bubble the winning point in a game of Trivial Pursuit because his correct answer of “Moors” to the question “Who invaded Spain in the eighth century?” did not match the card, which because of a misprint said “Moops.”

While the word “Moops” never actually occurred in Trivial Pursuit, the typo is not entirely fictionalized. According to WikiSein, “This incident is based on an actual error spotted by one of the writers while playing the home edition of Jeopardy!” Even so, fans at the game will receive a replica of the Trivial Pursuit card featured in the scene.

Appropriately, the uniforms combine the visual aesthetic of both Trivial Pursuit and actual bubbles. The jerseys evoke the color of the playing board and the triangular shapes of the game pieces, and the typeface selected for the team name and uniform numbers is decidedly bubbly. And, of course, the O’s of Moops are replaced by completed game pieces.

The Moops will invade Charleston for one game May 18 against the Augusta GreenJackets.