Yesterday’s essay on baseball contained a serious mathematical error. And since baseball is all about statistics, I feel compelled to correct it. I noted that the MLB package Earl and I purchased each season enabled us to watch a game for $7.50, instead of the astronomical amounts it costs to go to a major league baseball field.
My math was completely off because I divided a wrong number into another wrong number. I woke in the night fretting about the miscalculation and redid it. It turns out that it costs a little more than six cents per game to view from our armchairs.
Probably nobody cares except me. But baseball has always been about statistics, so I wanted to start the season right.
According to MLB, “For more than a century, statistics have been a staple of the game of baseball. Arguably no sport has a closer relationship with the stats that chronicle its every play.”
Most people, even those who think watching the game is akin to watching paint dry, are familiar with the terms home run, stolen base, and strikes. But that’s only the beginning. The real afficionado knows about caught stealing percentage (CS%), reached on error (ROE), and walks and hits per inning pitched (WHIP).
And the game’s fanatics, whether they get to watch for six cents or hundreds of dollars, will also know that the study of the statistical analysis of baseball is called Sabermetrics. If you want to learn more about this, go to Wikipedia for an extensive history or find the 2011 movie “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.
Then you’ll be set for Opening Day.
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