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.

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.