Who you are remembered by is the context. A lot of people like keeping up with sports so thats why they know this trivia. OTOH scientists in field X will know o

Who you are remembered by is the context. A lot of people like keeping up with sports so thats why they know this trivia. OTOH scientists in field X will know of all the seminal work in their field. You can make a big impact in the field and be totally unknown outside of it, most scientists probably prefer it that way.