Strange But True Facts About Baseball

Baseball was invented by Alexander Cartwright, NOT Abner Doubleday! Cartwright modeled it after the stick and ball game that he played then. The first known club match with rules written by him was played in June 19, 1846.

Each baseball game has 12,386,344 possible plays.

The odds of a fan being hit by a baseball are 300,000 to 1.
 

The shortest major league player was Eddie Gaedel, who was three feet, seven inches tall. His sole appearance in an MLB game was a publicity stunt.

The tallest player in Major League history is Minnesota Twins' pitcher Jon Rauch, who is six feet, eleven inches tall.

Baseball legend states that the silhouette on the MLB logo is Harmon Killebrew, who played for the Washington Senators, the Minnesota Twins and the Kansas City Royals. He was second to Babe Ruth in total homeruns at that time.

A strange rule of this game is that before every game, umpires remove the shine from the balls by rubbing them. The number of balls that they rub before every game is around six dozen. The mud with which the balls are rubbed is also location specific. Ideally, it should only come from a particular area in Burlington County, New Jersey.

Fidel Castro was once a star baseball player for the University of Havana.

In 1965, the minimum annual salary for a baseball player was $6,000, just a thousand dollars more than it had been in 1947.

A regulation baseball has 108 stitches.

The very first baseball game was played on June 19,1845, across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New York.

In baseball, a "can of corn" refers to a fly ball that is easy to catch.

Robert Redford attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship.

In an effort to sell more licensed apparel, minor-league baseball teams were changing their names so often that the sport's governing body now limits franchises to team name changes every three years.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, houses the largest collection of baseball cards: 200,000.

The first perfect nine innings baseball game was achieved by John Lee Richmond on 12 June 1880.

Giants baseball catcher Roger Bresnahan introduced shin guards in 1907.

In 1897, the Washington Senators became the first baseball team ever to introduce "Ladies' Day."

The longest baseball game was between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago White Sox and lasted for eight hours and six minutes. Due to MLB rules forbidding an inning to start after 1 o'clock AM, fans had to come back the next day to finish the game.

The average baseball only lasts about a week. Each baseball can only be used one time in a MLB game.

Pitcher Nolan Ryan struck out more players in his career of 27 seasons than any other pitcher.

Manager Alvin Dark of the San Francisco Giants told reporters that NASA would "put a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry hits a home run." When Perry finally hit a home run, it was 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

Having been open for nearly 100 years, Fenway Park in Boston is the oldest baseball stadium still in use.

The Louisville Slugger Museum, Kentucky holds the largest baseball bat in the world. This bat weighs 68,000 pounds and measures 120 feet.

The only person credited with umpiring two major sports, football and baseball, is Cal Hubbard.

In 1978, during a match between Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles, a fan suffered a heart attack. He was saved by a baseball player, George "Doc" Medich, who was a medical student during off season.

From April 30, 1982 to September 19, 1990, Cal Ripkin, Jr. played 2632 straight games, which means he didn’t miss a game in sixteen years!

Mike Schmidt earned the first $500,000 salary in baseball in 1977.

The 1926 New York Giants hold the record for the longest consecutive winning streak with 26 games in which they beat every National League team.