MLB Facts

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

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

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."

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."

Fenway Park's right-field bleachers are all green, except one. That single red seat marks a home run by Ted Williams. He hit it on June 9, 1946. The blast was officially marked at 502 feet, the longest homer ever hit inside the park. The ball crashed into a fan's straw hat before he ever saw it coming.

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.