The Last Home Run

second base, short stop, third base, left field, center field and right field. There is also an umpire that stands behind the catcher, who people call Blue, that keeps count of outs. Another part of the umpire’s job is to call strikes, foul balls, runs and balls against the batter. Up at bat, a player gets three balls and two strikes. Strikes are pitches that the umpire consider a “perfect” ball to hit. It’s right down the middle and in the strike zone. A ball is a pitch that is out of the…

Whether it be riding to Citi Field to watch my Mets play on a warm May night, or sitting on the couch at home, watching baseball has always been my favorite pastime. And a few years ago, I was introduced to an element of baseball that involves another passion of mine, mathematics. The study of the utterly distinct, yet blissful marriage of baseball and mathematics is known as sabermetrics, and it has brought my love of baseball to a new level. “Sabermetricians,” attempt to analyze baseball from…

Ever since I can remember baseball has been a part of my life in one way or another. My father's favorite sport has always been baseball and since the day I was born it has been growing on me as my favorite as well. Everything about baseball is what makes it so special to me, the time and length of the season, the beautiful fields and complexes, and the atmosphere of the games. I started playing baseball when I was about five years old and even though it was just me and my teammates hitting a…

I live in a world of crazy numbers and fancy acronyms, the world of sabermetrics. Originally defined by Bill James in 1980, sabermetrics is "the search for objective knowledge about baseball", yet the term has grown into much, much more. Sabermetrics give ordinary people like me, the tools to predict the future, to forecast the worth of a human being with a couple of intricate formulas and a pinch of extrapolation. It appeared to be magic when I first learned about the masses of statistics…

1. Bibliography: Green, Shawn and McAlpine, Gordon. The Way of Baseball. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2011. 224 pages 2. Title: The title is The Way of Baseball. It is significant because it tells you about baseball and how you can find stillness and what to do when you have found stillness. 3. Characters: Shawn Green is the protagonist who plays in the MLB some of his personality traits would be hard working, frustrated, and ambitious. Some of his physical characteristics…

Baseball is a strong game and involves a few easy things to play. The most important thing to use when playing the game of baseball is a bat. There are so many bats out there; small barrels, big barrels, even a few of everything on the bat is a barrel, but a few of my favorite bats and the more probably used bats throughout baseball is the Demarini vs. Marucci. These two bats are very well used and that's because they are the best bats put together. Let's start with Demarini. Demarini has been…

two outs in the top of the 9th inning and The Royals down a run to the Yankees, George Brett stepped up to the plate with a man on first base. Yankees skipper Billy Martin called on his closer, Goose Gossage, to make the final out in the game. Brett took the second pitch he saw from Gossage and launched it into the right field seats, presumably giving the Royals a 5-4 lead. Billy Martin was on his way from the dugout before Brett crossed home plate and cited an obscure rule on the excessive use…

wOBA is considered one of the best stats to quantify batting performance. But what is most likely to contribute to wOBA? Is it more important to have a strong BB/K rate or to produce on balls thrown in the strike zone that are put into play? Is production when hitting fly balls more important than hitting ground balls and if so by how much? In order to determine this, I used 2013-2015 data from ESPN Stats and Information and Pitch FX to see what correlates best with overall wOBA. The first test…

It was a hot blazing afternoon without a single mist of wind in sight. Droplets of sweat started to run down my face heading towards my mouth. I could taste the saltiness and dedication of hard work for my beloved sport which was baseball. Baseball is not just any sport to me, it is my source of happiness. I play it for the love and joy that overwhelms me whenever I walk onto the baseball field. The crowd cheering you and your team on making you feel the rush through your body wanting to play…

Cross Bloom Composition 1 Mrs. Rowles April 21, 2017 Baseball vs. Softball Baseball and Softball have many fans in each of the sports. Many players prefer to play one or the other but never both games. Baseball and softball can be very similar in various ways, but they have many differences as well. In both baseball and softball the games are enjoyed about the world, but in many different ways. The speed of the two games and how they are played, the rules for each game, and the different…