Find useful, and useless, facts online
Seen any good Web sites lately?
Spending as much time staring at the friendly neighborhood sports Mac as I do, I often find myself searching the Internet for the weird and the wacky in the world of sports. And from time to time, I like to use my space (not to be confused with ?myspace?) to share those strange tidbits with you readers.
Examples, you say? You?ve got it.
For instance, do you know anyone who is a sabermetrician? You might not think so, but I?ll bet you do. In fact, you?re reading a column written by one at this very moment.
No, a sabermetrician isn?t someone who studies swords, as the name might suggest. In fact, it is defined as a person who studies baseball statistics.
The word?s origin dates back to the early 1980s, and is derived from the initials ?SABR,? short for the Society for American Baseball Research.
See? Only four inches in, and we?ve already learned something. It?s not something useful, but at least it?s something.
Checking out a personal favorite site, ?snopes.com,? one can find out the veracity of various urban legends, including many from the world of sports.
For instance, did you know that the Yankees began wearing their now-famous pinstriped uniforms to hide Babe Ruth?s considerable girth? Well, at least that?s what the legend says. But it?s not at all true.
In 1912, the Yanks began wearing striped uniforms, just because it was a fad that had been adopted by the Giants the year before, and had been started a few seasons earlier by ? yep, you guessed it ? the Chicago Cubs.
But to be honest, wearing vertical stripes because one of your star players is a big fat guy is a much more interesting story.
Ever wonder how many major league baseball players have been from Tennessee? According to ?baseball-reference.com,? the definitive source for all sabermetricians, the number is 258 ? although the exact birthplace of each and every big-leaguer is not known, so it may be off by one or two.
But of those 258, who has hit the most home runs? Why, that would be Union City?s Steve Finley, who?s currently with the Giants. Through 17 seasons, the 40-year-old has hit 297 homers. Thanks for asking.
Steve Finley memorabilia isn?t exactly flying off the store shelves, but some awfully strange bits of baseball paraphernalia have been sold over the years.
Just a few quick clicks and a google or two are all you need to find out about transactions such as Charlie Sheen paying $93,500 for the ball that went between Bill Buckner?s legs in the 1986 World series, and someone once buying Nolan Ryan?s jockstrap for $25,000.
Quick, what?s the most amount of pitchers to ever combine for a no-hitter? If you said six, you?d be correct. Roy Oswalt, Pete Munro, Kirk Saarloos, Brad Lidge, Octavio Dotel, and Billy Wagner combined to no-hit the Yankees back in 2003.
Are those bits of information random enough for you? Probably. Will they get you very far in your career? No, they won?t. But isn?t useless information like this what the Internet?s all about?