12/84Percentage of Americans who believe their presence at a sports event influences its outcome: 25
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
8/84Number of South African athletes who have changed their citizenship in order to compete in the 1984 Olympics: 6
5/85Total horsepower at the 1984 Indianapolis 500: 23,000
At the 1984 Kentucky Derby: 1,000
8/85Percentage of Broadway tickets that are bought by companies and deducted as a business expense: 20
10/86Miles of runway the U.S. military has built in Honduras since 1983: 7.3
Number of racquetball courts it has built there: 1
10/86Percentage of men who say their biggest sports thrill would be to get the winning hit in the World Series: 32
11/86Height of basketball player Manute Bol: 7' 6 3/4"
11/86Rank of Mississippi, among all states, in the number of professional football players produced per capita: 1
5/86“Product categories” for which the 1988 Olympic organizers are selling official sponsorships: 44
10/87Price per person of a ten-day “Baseball for Peace” tour to Nicaragua during its fall baseball season: $1,150
4/87Estimated number of referees at children’s sporting events who are attacked each year by parents: 100
5/87Percentage decrease in the average winning bid at the Keeneland thoroughbred auction in 1986: 24
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
1/88Number of cheerleaders in the United States: 600,000
11/88Average number of golf games Dan Quayle played each week last year: 3
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
6/88Average increase in an NBA team’s season attendance when a black player is replaced by a comparable white: 10,000
6/88Rounds of golf played in America each year: 400,000,000
7/88Price of an order of sushi at Dodger Stadium: $4.50
9/88Number of the nine athletes that have appeared most frequently on the cover of Sports Illustrated who are white: 5
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
11/90Number of public telephones Southwestern Bell has installed this year that can be used while on horseback: 3
11/90Price of a set of “RN” golf balls from the gift shop at the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California: $6
4/90Number of times George Steinbrenner has seen the film Patton: 15
4/90Estimated amount of time that Michael Jordan has spent aloft while playing in NBA games, in hours: 3
5/90Number of photographs in the Associated Press library of President Bush engaged in sports: 108
Number of former major league players whose last names are palindromes: 7
6/90Number of biodegradable golf tees ordered this year from Peat “T” of Edmonton, Canada: 300,000,000
1/91University of Colorado employees traveling to the Orange Bowl this month to handle mascot Ralphie the Buffalo: 12
10/91Cost of a one-hour lesson in “ring psychology” at Slammers Wrestling Gym in Sun Valley, California: $70
Number this year: 370
7/91Number of professional baseball players who have named a child after Texas Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan: 11
9/91Percentage of the references to male tennis players made by TV sportscasters that use the player’s first name only: 8
Percentage of the references to female tennis players that do: 53 [see page 38]
1/92Ratio of the number of Chinese who will watch the Super Bowl this year to the number of Americans who will: 3:1
Number of the 18 teams whose helmet logos do not include lettering that have won the Super Bowl: 3
1/92Average number of cheerleading-related injuries reported each day in the United States: 34
10/92Number of the five U.S. Olympic basketball team members pictured on Kellogg’s cereal boxes who are white: 3
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
11/92Average number of cleat-dents made in each square foot of playing field during a professional football game: 56
11/92Chances that a professional football player will sustain a permanent injury before retiring: 2 in 3
12/92Number of bull castrations Mississippi State’s football coach made his team watch last fall as a “motivational” experience: 1
5/92Number of U.S. universities that offer a marketing degree with a specialty in golf management: 3
6/92Estimated number of cans of Diet Pepsi an Olympic athlete could consume without failing the USOC’s drug test: 22
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
8/92Years it would take a Nike worker in Indonesia to earn Michael Jordan’s endorsement fee: 44,492
1/93Percentage of Super Bowl viewers who do not live in the United States: 89
11/93Estimated number of comic strips in which Lucy has snatched a football from Charlie Brown, mid-kick: 32
3/93Average life span of an NBA basketball, in bounces: 10,000
3/93Rank of basketball among sports contributing to the largest number of fatalities among players each year: 1
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
5/93Average number of laps around the new White House jogging track required to burn off the calories in one Big Mac: 21
6/93Average percentage increase in the bounce of a golf ball that has been passed through an electron beam accelerator: 5
6/93Price of golf, dinner, beer, and a “cart dance” by a topless female caddie at Fort Worth’s New Orleans Nights club: $620
9/93Estimated number of cows it takes to supply the 22,000 footballs the NFL uses each season: 3,000
1/94Price of a pair of used Air Jordans in Japan: $60
1/94Rounds it took 16-year-old Dallas Malloy to win the first official women’s amateur boxing match, held last fall: 3
1/94Extra points kicked by a Virginia high school football player last fall after being elected Homecoming Queen at halftime: 3
1/94Chances that a member of the Hempstead, Texas, high school cheerleading squad was pregnant last fall: 1 in 4
2/94Estimated number of recruitment letters sent by U.S.C.’s basketball coach last spring to prospect Avondre Jones: 500
4/94Estimated portion of Shaquille O’Neal’s 1993 income he earned by playing basketball: 1/5
4/94Number of the four most highly paid sports figures worldwide last year who are race-car drivers: 2
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
1/95Number of domestic-violence counselors the NFL sent to its teams’ training camps last year: 28
11/95Percentage change since 1992 in the number of Americans who play touch football “frequently”: +19
3/95Chances that a professional athlete in the United States is black: 1 in 10
4/95Average age of the 3 white professional athletes with the largest incomes in the United States last year: 51
Average age of the 3 black professional athletes with the largest incomes: 27
4/95Percentage change since last summer in the market value of a Nolan Ryan rookie baseball card: -25
5/95Holes in one that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il reportedly shot in a single round of golf last fall: 5
5/95Average amount spent on the tires used by each car during the Indianapolis 500: $11,648
9/95Ratio of the median U.S. waiting period for a human liver transplant to the amount of time Mickey Mantle waited: 74:1
11/96Number of times Bill Clinton met with Secretary of Education Richard Riley last August: 1
3/96Chances that an employee of a pro basketball team is a player: 1 in 4
3/96Cost of Spike Lee’s two courtside seats at New York Knicks home games during the regular season: $86,000
3/96Hours Shaquille O’Neal spent snowed in at a Pennsylvania hotel in January with the cast of Sesame Street on Ice: 45
6/96Amount the Pentagon will spend this year to equip Andrews Air Force Base with a third golf course: $5,100,000
7/96Number of months before the Summer Olympics that the planners began manufacturing ice for the event: 3.5
7/96Number of Elvis impersonators the Olympic Committee has hired to entertain in the Olympic village: 3
9/96Percentage of white NFL head coaches whose teams have made the playoffs in the last seven seasons: 46
1/97Number by which Americans who watched last year’s Super Bowl exceeded those who voted in November: 43,000,000
11/97Number of NBA players with shaved heads in the season before Michael Jordan first shaved his: 6
Number last season: 76
11/97Amount by which Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo’s 1998 team contract exceeds that of Michael Jordan: $9,000,000
3/97Ratio of attendance at U.S. bingo games last year to attendance at professional basketball games: 59:1
3/97Number of recruitment letters a USC basketball coach sent Avondre Jones before he was signed: 900
4/97Number of Texas high school basketball coaches ejected from games last year for “unsporting behavior”: 90
5/97Amount Americans spent last year on golf clubs: $1,370,000,000
5/97Number of days before winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championship last winter that Tara Lipinski lost a baby tooth: 5
8/97Estimated number of days each year during which no major-league sports event takes place in the U.S.: 5
8/97Percentage of Americans who say they’ve never heard of Marv Albert: 46
1/98Average number of performance days lost per high-school cheerleading injury each year: 28.8
1/98Number of Super Bowl winners whose home stadium was domed: 0
10/98Average percentage points by which a male sports fan’s testosterone level rises when his team wins: 20
Average points by which it falls when they lose: 20
11/98Number of Moscow’s major newspapers that mentioned last August’s Clinton/Yeltsin summit the day before it began: 0
Number of U.S. households that chose professional wrestling over the President ‘s televised apology that month: 6,379,000
6/98Number of artificial reefs planned for construction worldwide to facilitate surfing: 4
8/98Number of $530 monogrammed Louis Vuitton World Cup soccer balls sold in the U.S. since last April: 87
9/98Estimated number of American senior citizens who played tackle football last year: 47,000
1/99Price that Manhattan’s new NBA boutique charges for a Waterford crystal vase engraved with an image of Larry Bird: $8,000
1/99Estimated number of colleges that Newt Gingrich’s high-school football coach queried in vain for a big enough helmet: 5
1/99Months after boxing promoter Don King was acquitted of fraud last year that he took his jurors to the Bahamas: 2
1/99Price of a day’s excursion at Obertraun Schilcherhaus, an Austrian resort offering nude cross-country skiing: $30
3/99Number of professional-style kitchens in the home Mike Tyson is attempting to sell: 7
3/99Amount Fortune magazine estimates that Michael Jordan NBA career has contributed to the U.S. economy: $10,000,000,000
4/99 Portion of Yankee Stadium tickets for last year’s World Series games that were available to the public: 1/6
6/99Strokes by which O.J. Simpson reports that his golf handicap has improved since the murder of his wife: 4
9/99Points by which the national Nielsen rating of the 1999 Women’s World Cup exceeded that of the NBA Finals: 2
2/00Ratio of the price of a 30-second Super Bowl ad to what Pizza Hut paid last fall for an ad on a Russian space rocket: 2:1
4/00Minutes of pregame snowball making allowed in the International Snow Battle Contest held this month in Finland: 30
5/00Estimated number of American men who suffer from compulsive bodybuilding: 669,000
7/00Chance that a U.S. major league baseball player is foreign-born: 1 in 5
9/00Percentage by which the cancer death rate in the area around Sydney’s Olympic Village exceeds the rest of the city’s: 8.5
Factor by which dioxin levels detected around the Village site during construction exceeded EPA guidelines: 1,540
2/01Score shouted by Justice Antonin Scalia at a Washington, D.C., tennis court in 1998 before claiming victory: "5-4!"
3/01Number of players on Spain ‘s gold-winning disabled Olympic basketball team recently found to have faked their disabilities: 10
6/01Holes of golf that Japan’s prime minister played after learning of February’s fatal collision of a fishing boat and a U.S. sub: 3
7/01Minimum number of people who have been trampled to death at soccer matches in Africa since April: 177
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
7/01Chances that a body of water in Mexico is too contaminated to swim in: 3 in 4
8/01Estimated amount Tiger Woods’s caddie made last year: $1,000,000
1/02Minimum number of Winter Olympics volunteers who were rejected last fall after a criminal background check: 273
3/02Number of U.S. professional-sports stadiums whose corporate namesakes have filed for bankruptcy since December 1999: 5
3/02Number of boxers who have died in the United States since 1970 from injuries sustained in the ring: 53
8/02Number of students at Illinois’s Aurora University who have earned academic credit for a course in “business golf”: 29
5/03Chances that a thoroughbred stallion is a patrilineal descendant of the Darley Arabian, a seventeenth-century horse: 19 in 20
9/03Estimated number of soccer balls the U.S. government sent Iraq this summer to help “bring life back to normal”: 60,000
1/04Minimum amount boxer Mike Tyson earned in the nine years before filing for bankruptcy last August: $300,000,000
10/04Seconds by which this year’s winner of the men’s Olympic 400-meter dash was faster than the winner of the women’s: 5.81
11/04Distance in feet traveled by the winning pumpkin at Delaware’s Punkin Chunkin Competition last year: 4,434.28
Length in feet of the barrel of “The Second Amendment” pumpkin cannon from which it was shot: 150
4/04Factor by which the average pay of a pro baseball player and a Fortune 500 CEO, respectively, have increased since 1973: 16, 4
11/05Percentage change since 2004 in the number of NFL teams that require all fans to get full pat-downs: +167
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
5/05Number of female U.S. soldiers disciplined this year for mud-wrestling at an Iraqi prison camp: 2
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
12/06Score by which Russia defeated Kazakhstan in the 2006 Homeless World Cup final in September: 1‒0
12/06Percentage of N.F.L. fourth downs on which teams are better off “going for it,” according to a Berkeley study: 40
Percentage of fourth downs on which N.F.L. teams do go for it: 13
5/06Minimum number of ranches in Texas where one can shoot a zebra: 56
5/06Number of Harlequin novels published last year that feature love between a Western woman and an Arab sheikh: 15
Number by 2008 that will feature NASCAR races: 22
6/06Fee for which a Florida middle-school gym teacher allowed students to skip class, before he was fired in January: $1
Years that his predecessor had operated under the same policy: 1