Baseball Facts

The first baseball caps were made of straw.

So that's how they cheat - a microwaved baseball will fly farther than a frozen baseball.

The average life span of a major league baseball is 5-7 pitches.

When pitched, the average Major League baseball rotates 15 times before being hit.

All major league baseball umpires must wear black underwear while on the job!

The New York Yankees became the first MLB team to permanently adopt jersey numbers in 1929, though the Cleveland Indians beat them to the field by taking the diamond first on April 16, 1929.

The average life span of a major league baseball is 5-7 pitches!

Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep him cool! He changed it every 2 innings!

Bank robber John Dillinger played semi-professional baseball.

Babe Ruth wore No. 3 because he batted third.

Field of Dreams finished filming in 1988. The baseball diamond stretched across two Iowa farms, and both were supposed to go back to corn. Farmer Don Lansing left his half standing instead. His family had farmed that ground since 1906. He never charged a cent for admission or parking. By the film's 20th anniversary, about 65,000 strangers a year were coming to play catch. They still show up today.

For 16 seasons, a Yankees center fielder chased down fly balls and won four World Series rings. That was Bernie Williams, whose number 51 now hangs in Monument Park. He also earned a Latin Grammy nomination and, at 47, a Bachelor of Music degree. He has since performed with the New York Philharmonic. Every August, he still trades his glove for a guitar at a Hudson Valley winery.

Michigan State coach Danny Litwhiler wanted to clock his pitchers, so in 1974 he borrowed a police radar gun built for catching speeders. It had no battery, so an officer drove the cruiser onto the field to power it, and it worked. Litwhiler and JUGS then built the first radar gun made for baseball. The prototype sits in the Hall of Fame, and radar guns still point at every mound.

A foul ball fell into the Philadelphia bleachers in 1923. Robert Cotter, age 11, caught it and pocketed it. Back then the ball belonged to the Phillies, so they pressed charges. He spent the night in a cell. Next morning a judge freed him, refusing to brand a boy a thief over a $1.50 ball. It was the first court ruling that a fan could keep one. Every foul ball in the seats tonight is yours.

The shortstop was not invented as an infielder. The hand-made balls of the 1840s were too light to throw 200 feet. So one man stood in the grass between the outfield and the pitcher, relaying throws in. Doc Adams played that spot and believed he was the first. In 1857 he also set the bases at 30 yards. The bases are still 90 feet apart. Every team still fields a shortstop.

Ken Harrelson played golf all day in 1964 and came to a night game in Kansas City with a blistered hand that could barely grip the bat, so he wore his red golf glove at the plate. His teammates laughed until he homered twice. The next day Mickey Mantle bought 20 pairs of golf gloves and the Yankees warmed up in them, calling him Mrs. Harrelson. Almost every hitter wears a pair now.

On Oct. 15, 1981, a professional cheerleader named Krazy George Henderson led a cheer at a playoff game in the Oakland Coliseum. After a few false starts, fans stood and threw up their arms one section at a time until it rolled around the whole stadium. The A's highlight film caught it. Forty-five years later, crowds still start the wave in stadiums every season.

For six years, Detroit fans trespassed onto the empty field of the torn-down Tiger Stadium with their own lawnmowers. Tom Derry started it in 2010, when the diamond where Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth played had weeds up to eight feet tall. His crew grew to about 30. Police kept throwing them off at first, and they kept coming back. Detroit kids play ball on that same spot today.

In 2000, the New York Mets owed Bobby Bonilla $5.9 million. Instead of paying, they deferred it: $1.19 million per year from 2011 to 2035. The owner planned to invest the savings with his friend Bernie Madoff. Madoff turned out to be running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. The Mets are now paying Bonilla $29.8 million for a career that ended in 1999.

Karl Kissner was cleaning out his late grandfather's attic in Defiance, Ohio when he found a dusty box. Inside were roughly 700 baseball cards from 1910 - including 16 Ty Cobbs and a Honus Wagner - in near-perfect condition, untouched for a century. The collection was valued at $3 million.

$700 million. That's what Shohei Ohtani's contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers is worth - the richest deal in sports history. But right now, he takes home just $2 million per year. He deferred $680 million of his own salary so the Dodgers could use that money to sign other players and build a championship team around him.

Wrigley Field's scoreboard is a giant board that has loomed over the bleachers since 1937. No batted baseball has ever struck it, the Cubs say, not even Roberto Clemente's legendary blast. A golf ball did. On April 17, 1951, Sam Snead hit two balls off the grass at home plate, no tee. His first shot struck the board. His second cleared it clean. Frankie Frisch just stared. "Look, he didn't even wiggle."

Bo Jackson destroyed his left hip in the 1991 NFL playoffs and was told he would never play again. Doctors replaced the joint with a prosthetic hip. Eighteen months later he pinch-hit for the Chicago White Sox - took the first pitch for a strike, then drove the next one over the right-field wall. All 42,775 fans at Comiskey Park rose to their feet. He hit 16 home runs that season and won AL Comeback Player of the Year.

Tom Brady was drafted by the Montreal Expos as a catcher in the 1995 MLB Draft. The scout ranked him a late second-round talent but placed him in round 18 - they knew his Michigan football scholarship made him impossible to sign. Brady chose football and won seven Super Bowls. Asked where baseball would have led, Brady said: "I would be selling insurance."