By The Numbers

Everyone knows there are certain things that simply do not go together: oil and water, fire and ice, nerds and jocks. However, an interesting trend is developing in cross-cultural enjoyment. More jocks than ever have been working Sudoku puzzles as a way of empowering and perfecting their critical thinking skills. While it seems unusual to see a mathematic puzzle in a baseball dugout something even more unusual is in the stands. Scores of nerds (engineers, accountants, computer geeks) now fill baseball’s box seats. The reason for the attraction to poindexters everywhere may be that baseball, more than any other sport, celebrates and glorifies numbers.

The records

One of the things that keeps baseball fans coming back, tuning in and going to the stadium is to watch records be made and broken. It’s interesting to know the top record holders in each category and watch their achievement pursued. Look up a baseball record sheet on the Web and you may be spending a long time running down list of everything from most hits by a left-hander in a single-season to the highest number of steals from a pitcher. Watching somebody approach and take a record is an...