Spring is finally here, which marks the closing weeks of the school year and a new season of Major League Baseball. Baseball is driven by math, perhaps more than any other sport. Baseball is a game of mathematical numbers used to try and determine how players respond in certain situations. Even the casual fan understands the concepts of fielding percentage, batting average, and earned run average.
Teams also keep all kinds of statistics on batters, such as number of times at bat, number of runs, number of hits, number of walks, number of strikeouts, etc. These are all used to determine the quality of a batter to be able to hit and score runs. Professional baseball players are analyzed using lots of math to develop a statistical picture of the player as batter.
Then there is the entire math related to the actual dimensions of the professional baseball field. The distance from one base to another is 90 feet, for example, the pitcher's mound is 60 feet from home plate, and the distance from home plate to left field is 342 feet.
Math is used everywhere in life and especially in professional baseball.
