I learned to read at an early age. I’m talking about box scores, not Shakespeare. There was no access to the internet back then; just local sports pages sprawled across my family’s kitchen table every evening. By the time I was halfway through elementary school, I was able to recite virtually any statistic on the back of a random baseball card as if it were the opening line of a nursery rhyme.
On days I’d be home from school due to an illness, I’d get a notebook and pen, have Three’s Company reruns playing in the background on a 13″ black and white television and grab a stack of Chips Ahoy cookies – the Originals; you know, the ones found in the blue packaging that are the world’s perfect food (this is not up for debate). And there I’d sit, poring over baseball stats. I was able to use the numbers to determine how a particular game had progressed; the accompanying game summary written by some journalist was completely superfluous.
To this day, three decades later, I can still remember Rick Sutcliffe’s record with the Cubs when he won the 1984 NL Cy Young Award (16-1); the number of RBI Don Mattingly collected during his MVP season in 1985 (145); and how many home runs MLB leader, Jesse Barfield, slugged in 1986 (40). Conversely, I couldn’t tell you what I had for dinner three nights ago.
The marriage of sports and math is one that is eternally evolving in my head. I have always been able to rattle off a bunch of numbers in an attempt to prove whatever seemingly mindless point I had been trying to make. That is what this site is all about. Lots of numbers supporting (hopefully) interesting perspectives.
Except where noted, the source for all statistics on this site is sports-reference.com.
– Eric Eisenberg