Monday, July 15, 2013

A very foul record

Somebody get hold of the Guinness people. Surely another world record has been set. The validity is beyond doubt, because the TV folks have footage of this historic event. How else would an idiot like me know about such a thing?

That would be a single fan in Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, catching/retrieving not one, but four, count em FOUR foul balls during the course of a game. That's one lucky guy, the fact he's a Cubs' fan notwithstanding. Ahem.

To likely no one's great surprise, the stat monsters crunched the numbers on the chances of this happening. According to them.....

The average major league baseball stadium has 30,000 people in attendance at any given game.

During the course of any such game, an average of 27 baseballs are hit into the stands. Yes, there are people that actually keep track of such things, another believe it or not. Are you listening, Ripley?

Therefore, the chances of any one fan nabbing a baseball that flies into the stands are roughly 1100 to one. Not good.

Going a step further (you knew they would), it was calculated that the odds of the same person in the seats nabbing four baseballs in one game were approximately 1,000,000,000,000 to one.

Or, put another way, about the same chances as the Detroit Lions winning the Super Bowl any year soon. Nyuk, nyuk.

Hi Deb. Was good to see you again. And if you're reading this where I think you might be reading it, tell Lynn I said to speed it up. She'll understand. I hope.








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