I did watch Hitch Hikers Guide recently, but that's not what this is about. About a week ago MLB celebrated the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game. In his honor, many players were wearing the number 42 (which has been retired for all of MLB). But the real point I want to make is this: if there are games in which every single player of both teams is wearing the same number, and everything goes alright, isn't that proof that numbers on baseball jerseys are pretty worthless?
2 comments:
Sure everything will "go alright", but I can only imagine the people in the scorers box trying to figure out which two pitchers are warming up or who the new subs are each inning (especially for the 'away' team with whom you are less familiar). There are so many stats kept in baseball that they are kept pretty busy as it is. If nothing else, the numbers allow teams to (a) sell more jerseys and (b) have a little more accuracy in the box score.
They are "pretty busy"?!?! This is the sport which averages about 30 seconds between pitches! Baseball games last two and a half hours and people have figured out that there is about 7 minutes of action spread across those two and a half hours.
No one knows players numbers anyway. Casual fans look on the scoreboard to see who is at bat. Regular fans know who is on teams and what positions they play. Crazy fans know their numbers, but they can recognize all the players from 300 yards anyway, so who needs a number?
Baseball has fewer substitutes than any other team sport, except for soccer. Most games see the starting 9, plus about 2 pitchers and maybe 1 other position player. Add 1 to that number if there is a DH.
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