Published Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:57 AM
Updated Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:58 AM

 

Finding Mudville 5/14/08

Growing up I never really gave it much thought, but baseball helped improve my math skills a lot.

I hated math.

I was good enough at it and made decent grades, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. The running joke in my life is that I could never balance a checkbook, but ask me to figure out a batting average or a pitcher’s earned run average, strike outs per nine innings, or walks to strike out ratio, and I can rattle those numbers right off the top of my head and correctly throw in a decimal point for good measure.

Baseball is a game of numbers.

In fact, it is all about numbers, from 714 to 4,192, baseball is about numbers, right down to the numbers worn on the players’ backs.

Think about the significance of the number 56 in baseball.

It is the number of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. It is also the last two digits in Pete Rose’s all-time hits total (4256) and the number Barry Bonds reached last year breaking Hank Aaron’s 755 home run record (756). I don’t even know what Bonds’ final home run numbers are now and probably won’t care about it until either Alex Rodriguez or Ken Griffey Jr. get close to it in a couple of years, Griffey first.

Numbers are so important to baseball that an OCD mathematician like Bill James could make a career out of it.

Baseball is such that the benchmark of what it considers a good hitter, a .300 batting average, means the hitter would fail 70 percent of the time.

Did you know that over a 162-game season, the difference between hitting .250 and .300 (based on 500 at bats) is just 25 hits? That’s one extra hit a week.

One tweener, one legged-out grounder to deep short, one frozen rope that skips off the end of the second baseman’s glove, one gap shot that Andrew Jones doesn’t skid across the grass to snag just before it hits the ground.

One hit a week.

That’s the difference between being a Rob Deer and a Pete Rose, and I’m sure y’all are asking, “Who’s Rob Deer?”

My point exactly, one more hit a week and you’d probably know.

Baseball is so caught up in its numbers that for almost 30 years one of its numbers carried an asterisk (*) around on its back.

Ford Frick, who historians claim saddled Roger Maris’ single season home run record of 61 with the infamous asterisk refuted that notion saying instead that the two records would stand side-by-side, the 162-game HR record and the 154-game HR record because he thought the 162-game schedule was something that wouldn’t last but a few years and would eventually return to the standard 154.

Besides DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, there is only one truly unattainable record out there besides Cy Young’s 512 career wins, and that’s Nolan Ryan’s 5,714 career strikeouts (notice the 714 in his career totals? The number 714 is probably the most famous number in baseball. If you don’t know what it is and what it means, then you aren’t a baseball fan).

Twenty-five years ago this week Ryan broke Walter Johnson’s record of 3,508 strikeouts. Like Sir Edmund Hillary and the climbing of Mount Everest, since Ryan reached the summit of Mount Freight Train, eight other pitchers have followed. Numbers two and three on the list, Roger Clemens (4,672) and Randy Johnson (4,616) are still 1,000 K’s behind the Ryan Express.

While at age 42, Johnson leads all active pitchers, he’d have to pitch for the next five years and strike out an average of 200 hitters a season to eclipse Ryan.

Besides stats, the most recognizable and most often copied numbers in baseball are the ones stitched on the players’ backs.

Numbers appeared on uniform shirtsleeves as early as 1909, but didn’t find their way onto major league uniforms until 1929, and were initiated by the Cleveland Indians, not the New York Yankees. By the mid-1930s, every major league team had adopted uniform numbers, though it wasn’t until 1937 that the last hold out, the Philadelphia Athletics, caved and adopted the uniform number scheme.

Babe Ruth’s number 3 and Lou Gehrig’s number 4 were so assigned because of their position in the lineup, with Ruth being the number three hitter and Gehrig hitting clean up behind him. While Ruth’s number 3 is widely considered baseball’s most famous number, the Sultan of Swat spent the majority of his playing career numberless.

Ty Cobb never wore a number on his back. Neither did Shoeless Joe or Walter Johnson.

As for the whole uniform number thing, I’m totally old school in that regard.

Except for Orel Hershiser, no baseball number should be above 50.

Being a product of the conservative Cincinnati Reds uniform numbering system, I am totally jaded on who should have what numbers. The Reds dished out their uniform numbers this way: Managers and coaches 1 through 4; catchers 6 through 9; infielders 10 through 19; outfielders 20 through 29; and pitchers 30 and above, the last number used being 49.

So when I saw the Dodgers’ Joe Beimel stroll from the bullpen last weekend wearing number 97, the guy lost all sense of credibility in my eyes. That’s a defensive lineman’s number not a pitcher’s. No real baseball fan or player should walk onto the field wearing a number that high.

Those numbers are reserved for non-roster invitees to spring training, the minor league guys who are guaranteed a spring training invite to the big club, but will hang around just long enough to get used to the $400 daily meal money stipend.

Another Nolan Ryan numbers factoid: Besides Jackie Robinson, Ryan is the only player to have his number retired by three different teams (30 with the Angels, 34 with the Rangers and Astros).

Just a little numbers trivia.