Game of Numbers

The other day I was listening to the Ticket here in Dallas and one of the hosts brought up a very good question. One which they didn't go on to discuss, but it got me thinking.

Why do people care about numbers more so in baseball than in any other sport?

As Gates and I sat at Buffalo Wild Wings on Sunday watching the Raiders and Cowboys games respectively, we got to talking about the question and there are a few answers we came up with. While they may not be the end all be all of answers, we felt it was a very good foundation for a discussion, especially with the NFL celebrating Brett Favre's record breaking touchdowns.

THE BOREDOM THEORY

After thinking about the question for a few minutes, Gates offered the answer that there's nothing else to talk about in baseball. He made an incredible point. If you ever watch a Major League Baseball game on TV, the announcers have to make small talk the entire game. There's dead time between pitches, between hitters, between innings and it all can't be filled with educational banter about the sport - especially with a 162 game schedule. It was more so evident this season when it seemed as though every player under the sun was going for a baseball record. How many more times could we have heard about Barry Bonds' historic chase for Hank Aaron's elusive 755? They've been talking about Barry breaking the record for years now and it just now came to fruition. Even before the talk about Barry doing it, there was talk about the young Junior Griffey from the Seattle Mariners going after Aaron's homerun record even though he was nowhere near the mark. Now that Bonds has surpassed Aaron's record and continues to set the record again with each blast into the stands, there is already talk about the next person to come up to break the record: Alex Rodriguez, the youngest player ever to reach 500 homeruns in a career. Where does it end? If A-Rod breaks the record, I'd be willing to bet anything they start talking about Albert Pujols breaking it and after that Prince Fielder and after that some other hot shot young bat. While A-Rod has a pretty good shot at going after the record, it's still really early to be talking about, yet the announcers all put it in the back of our minds that A-Rod is on his historic chase for Bonds' record.

Another interesting facet to the Boredom Theory is the fact that unlike other sports, baseball is not full of in-your-face action like say football or basketball or hockey. If you think about it, baseball could be compared to golf. Oh, did I forget to mention all of the talk in golf about Tiger Woods' chase for Jack Nickaulson's all-time majors wins record? Maybe there is substance to this theory after all... While watching football, for instance, there is so much strategy and planning that goes into each and every play that analysts and commentators could talk for hours about a single play. But no, they have a little over 30 seconds to talk about the last play, draw on the telestrator, talk about the players' stats for the game and then off to the next play where the cycle begins again. Perhaps it's because football is a team game every single play. While the quarterbacks, halfbacks and receivers get lots of the glory, they still share it around on every play. "Did you see that pass from Romo to TO?" You can't say the same thing about baseball because an offensive play is relegated to one player basically. Can the hitter put the ball into play? The only way it would change would be a man on base stole a base or the hitter sacrificed the runner over, etc. But even then the announcers say, "Wow, perfect sacrifice bunt by [insert name here]. He was able to move the runner to third and in scoring position." Based on the announcers commentary, the credit goes all to the hitter for laying down the bunt, but what about the runner who took a few extra steps off of second to ensure the defense wasn't able to make a play on him? All the credit goes to whoever's in the batter's box at the time of the pitch. To make matters worse, every time the hitter comes up to bat, we see some kind of stat for him whether it's on TV or on the Jumbotron at the stadium. We see batting average, home runs, runs batted in, on-base percentage, last at-bats, etc. Baseball makes it a point for you to always be aware of the numbers of each and every single player, not so much teams. The biggest team records in baseball are most wins in a season, most runs scored in a game, and World Series wins. However, in football, the magic number is 17. As in the 17-0 record posted by the 1972 Miami Dolphins. When in baseball do you hear of members of the 2001 Seattle Mariners cracking open a bottle of champagne every time a team loses it's 47th game? Never. Baseball is purely individualistic when it comes to stats.

THE HISTORY THEORY

Another theory we developed at Buffalo Wild Wings is the History Theory. Baseball has been around since the mid-1850s so wouldn't you expect a sport that's been around for that long to have some kind of obsession with numbers? Well, now that I think about it, this theory fits into another theory of mine:

THE HALL OF FAME THEORY

Aside from the Boredom Theory, I believe this could be the reason for baseball fans gushing over numbers more so than fans from any other sport. Drawing from the now defunct History Theory, why would you care about numbers of a game that's over 150 years old? Because it's the numbers that make you immortal. If I'm not mistaken the Football Hall of Fame not only takes those with the best numbers, but also with the most impact on the field. On the other hand the Baseball Hall of Fame is comprised of sports writers in love with the old timers and old timers wanting to keep their legacies intact. When a player has been retired for five years, he is eligible for the Hall of Fame. Now to get in the Hall of Fame through the writers vote, he must receive 75% of votes from the sportswriters to be enshrined into immortality. If that doesn't work, the living Hall of Famers get to vote on who they think should be enshrined, but only if the player didn't make it through the sportswriters' ballots within 20 years. Even then, the veteran's committee only votes every odd-numbered year. So what does it take to make it into the Hall of Fame? Numbers, unless you gambled in which case you are banned from the Hall. Isn't that what everyone in baseball wants to do? Make it to the Hall of Fame? I certainly think so. Why else would Rafael Palmeiro continue to play even as his skills continued to diminish? Two numbers - 3,000 and 500. He wanted 3,000 hits and 500 homeruns in his career. I even think he made it into the 500 homeruns-500 doubles club. Why did Sammy Sosa come back to play with the Rangers in 2007? Love of the game? A little. 600 homeruns? Most definitely. He became only the fifth player in baseball's storied history to reach the plateau joining Barry Bonds (756 and counting), Hank Aaron (755), Babe Ruth (714) and Willie Mays (660). Sammy simply wanted to be in the company of those legends instead of having his career tarnished by alleged steroid use. Five years after he retires wouldn't it look good on his Hall of Fame resume to say (5th member of 600 homerun club, 66 homeruns in 1998, only player to hit 60 homeruns in three consecutive seasons)? Another example: Craig Biggio. Why else would Biggio come back and play sparingly over a long arduous season for a dismal Astros team? To get to 3,000 hits. It's widely known that there are certain numbers that virtually guarantee you a Hall of Fame vote: 3,000 hits and 500 homeruns.
Perhaps, it is for the love of the players growing up that we constantly memorize their career stats and root for them to gain entrance into Cooperstown.
Or it's the players who are obsessed with defining their place in the history of America's favorite pasttime.

WHAT'S IN A NUMBER?

After the discussion Gates and I had, we began throwing out numbers associated with baseball lore:

755 Hank Aaron's career homerun record until this year.
511 Cy Young's career win total.
2,632 Cal Ripken Jr.'s consecutive games played streak.
56 Joe Dimaggio's consecutive games with a hit streak.
5,714 Nolan Ryan's career strikeout total.
4,256 Pete Rose career hit total.
73 Barry Bond's single season homerun record.
7 Nolan Ryan's number of career no-hitters.
262 Ichiro Suzuki's hits in a season.
749 Cy Young's career complete games record.
110 Walter Johnson's career shutouts record.
482 Trevor Hoffman's career saves record.
20 Roger Clemens/Kerry Wood record for most strikeouts in a game.
191 Hack Wilson's single season RBI record.
1 Don Larsen's record for perfect games in a World Series game.

Those numbers just barely begin to scratch the surface.

How about numbers on jerseys?
That's how we identify our favorite players; however, I got to thinking. It seems as though the most storied franchises (Boston, New York (AL), Chicago (NL)) all wear jerseys without the player's last name on the back. Personally, I think it's to keep the myth of the legendary teams alive. With all the uniform numbers throughout baseball, the most recognized one has to be 42. Jackie Robinson's number. The number has been permanently retired by Major League Baseball; however, Mariano Rivera still wears the number because he wore the number prior to the game-wide retirement of it. Just think about the legendary players and their numbers and you can see how they can invade the mind of a baseball fan.

Try it out. I'll type a number and just think of a baseball player you associate with that number, whether he be living or dead, on your team or not.

I'll start you off with an easy one:










34

2

7

6

21

44

35

25

10

14

23

5

8

1

19

41

9

4

12

Numbers are what make baseball great.