108 DOUBLE STITCHES: A Charity Baseball Game Between the Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves in 1931

The Law of Truly Large Numbers

The Law of Truly Large Numbers
With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen. The point is that truly rare events, say events that occur only once in a million [as the mathematician Littlewood (1953) required for an event to be surprising] are bound to be plentiful in a population of 250 million people. If a coincidence occurs to one person in a million each day, then we expect 250 occurrences a day and close to 100,000 such occurrences a year.
Going from a year to a lifetime and from the population of the United States to that of the world (5 billion at this writing), we can be absolutely sure that we will see incredibly remarkable events. When such events occur, they are often noted and recorded. If they happen to us or someone we know, it is hard to escape that spooky feeling.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/methods-for-studying-coincidences/

21 July 2011

A Charity Baseball Game Between the Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves in 1931 « Misc. Baseball

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A Charity Baseball Game Between the Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves in 1931

This game happened on September 23, 1931. It did not get much notice in the New York Times, which said that “About 20,000 persons attended the game played by the Red Sox and the Braves in the National League park today for the benefit of the city of Boston unemployment fund.

“Approximately $25,000 was realized from the gate receipts and the sale of baseballs signed by the Mayor of Boston, Babe Ruth, Earl Webb and the entire Athletic team.”

Here’s the headline:

As a way to mark the good deed the two Boston teams performed, here’s the box score. The only name I really recognize is that of umpire Bill Klem, although the Red Sox’s Webb was in the midst of setting the single-season doubles record with 67. He did not hit any of the three doubles in this game, though: