5/84Percentage of black baseball players in leadership positions (catcher, shortstop, second base): 15
6/84Percentage of baseball players signed to professional contracts who never appear in a major league game: 92
10/86Percentage of men who say their biggest sports thrill would be to get the winning hit in the World Series: 32
10/87Price per person of a ten-day “Baseball for Peace” tour to Nicaragua during its fall baseball season: $1,150
5/87Number of times the word “fuck” appears in Nails, the autobiography of the Mets’ Lenny Dykstra: 160
9/87Amount the New York Mets spend each season for tape to wrap Gary Carter: $5,000
9/87Number of the 161 players in baseball’s Hall of Fame who wore glasses while on the field: 2
5/88Pounds of mud for rubbing baseballs bought by major league teams each year from Burns Bintliff of Delaware: 182
5/88Amount of U.S. humanitarian aid the contras spent on baseball and volleyball equipment in 1985 and 1986: $1,245
7/88Price of an order of sushi at Dodger Stadium: $4.50
9/88Number of major league baseball games that were rained out in the first half of the 1987 season: 18
10/89Estimated number of ash trees used to supply major league baseball teams with Louisville Sluggers this year: 6,600
3/89Percentage increase, since 1980, in average attendance at the Los Angeles Dodgers’ spring-training games: 53
4/90Number of times George Steinbrenner has seen the film Patton: 15
Number of former major league players whose last names are palindromes: 7
7/91Number of professional baseball players who have named a child after Texas Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan: 11
10/92Amount the Department of Defense will spend on softballs this year: $1,000,000
10/92Ratio of New York Met Bobby Bonilla’s annual salary to the value of his weight in gold: 5:1
7/92Estimated number of baseballs, photos, and posters Texas Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan autographed last winter: 90,000
Estimated amount he earned from this: $1,800,000
7/92Price paid at the Chicago White Sox Charities auction in April for a vial of infield dirt from Comiskey Park: $75
4/93Ratio of the divorce rate in cities with a major-league baseball franchise to the rate in cities that are applying for one: 3:4
4/93Estimated distance the average major-league home run would travel if hit on the moon, in feet: 4,200
8/94Price paid at auction last year for Pete Rose’s good-behavior voucher from an Illinois minimum-security prison: $770
8/94Speed, in miles per hour, of pitches hurled at the heads of human cadavers last year in tests of a new, safer baseball: 70
Number of the 55 no longer playing who never hit another: 11
4/95Percentage change since last summer in the market value of a Nolan Ryan rookie baseball card: -25
9/95Ratio of the median U.S. waiting period for a human liver transplant to the amount of time Mickey Mantle waited: 74:1
7/97Number of buffalo-meat hot dogs sold per baseball game at Atlanta’s Turner Field last summer: 2,350
1/99Number of words devoted to the Depression in Houghton Mifflin’s fifth-grade history book, Build Our Nation: 332
7/00Chance that a U.S. major league baseball player is foreign-born: 1 in 5
7/01Number of U.S. major-league baseball players this year who are natives of the Dominican Republic: 79
Ratio of their combined salaries to the Dominican Republic’s military expenditures last year: 2:3
4/04Factor by which the average pay of a pro baseball player and a Fortune 500 CEO, respectively, have increased since 1973: 16, 4
Percentage by which this exceeds the seating capacity of Wrigley Field: 14
5/05Number of full-time reporters for ESPN who are covering only Barry Bonds: 1
7/05Number of previous baseball seasons that Washington, D.C., fielded a professional team: 89
Chances that it had a losing record: 4 in 5
11/07Maximum number of “unsaved” players permitted per team in a Massachusetts evangelical softball league: 4