The 2016 and 2017 Baltimore Orioles traveled with a chess board. Primarily, they played in clubhouses before games, but on several occasions, Manny Machado and Wade Miley procured a table from their five-star hotel and staged late-night matches in one of their rooms. They talked trash, attempted to avenge defeats and played past 2 a.m.



“Straight nerd stuff,” Miley said.



Machado had picked up chess during his first years in the Orioles’ clubhouse, where he saw swaths of teammates locked in enticing competition and wanted in. His first games were brief.



“When I first started playing,” Machado said, “I didn’t know what the hell a rook was, a pawn, any of that.”



So, the Dodgers’ new shortstop did what he does whenever he encounters something unfamiliar that intrigues him: He studied it. He devoured all of the intel YouTube had to offer. He downloaded the Chess app onto his iPhone and tested himself in...