Wednesday, May 19, 2004
90 baseballs
Posted by Matthew NameeI'm watching the Dodgers-Phillies game, and the announcer just made an interesting comment -- the Phillies started batting practice today with nine dozen baseballs, and finished with only 18. The announcer acted like this was an amazing thing, being left with only 18 baseballs after starting with 9 dozen.
It doesn't seem too overwhelming to me. Nine dozen balls is 108, meaning the Phillies used 90 baseballs for batting practice. If 12 players took batting practice, that's 7.5 baseballs per player. Intuitively, that seems about right.
Matthew Namee cofounded The Hardball Times in 2004, when he was working as the assistant to baseball author and Red Sox executive Bill James. Matthew still lives in Kansas, where he is currently pursuing a law degree. He can be reached at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.