Baseball fun facts

Baseball has always been the national sport of the United States, along with football. Since I live in Canada, I never managed to go watch a baseball game in my life. We used to have the Expos in Montreal but ever since they moved out I did not have interest in this sport so I never managed to go see a game. I still watch some games here and then on television specially around the World Series. Last week I was watching the season opener game of the Yankees and a question came to me. I was watching all those foul balls flying into the crowd and the balls that the umpire scratches at almost every 6 or 7 straight pitches and I wondered how many balls do they use in a game? Or even better, how many do they use during a whole season?

Some of those baseballs end up in the crowd and they make some happy fans. But what about the baseballs the umpire scratches? Where do they end up? I searched around a little and did not find any plausible answer. So I believe they end up at the home team's practice. If anyone comes across this information somewhere it would be kind to let me know!

What about broken baseball bats? Well if the players were not superstitious and would not change a bat when they are in a slump then perhaps the number would not be as big as predicted. Many thousands of bats are used during an entire season but several of them are still in good shape. Many trees were cut down to make these bats. It's hard to believe it when we are told to protect the forest and the environment! I just hope you learned more with these facts about baseball.

So I did a bit of research and collected some impressive numbers. In average, during a baseball game, they keep the same ball for 6 pitches before the umpire scratches it or that it flies in the crowd. Since during a game there are in average 275 pitches, then around 45 balls will be used during one baseball game. Some end up in the crowd and the total is around 60 baseballs. Multiply that by 162 games in a season and it makes a total of 160 000 used balls during a season. Quite impressive uh? If you take into consideration that the cost of a baseball is around 3$, then the total amount of money spent by the teams is 480 000$.