46 – Why Nine Players on Each Team?

RUBBERY SHRUBBERY Post 46

This is the Rubbery Shrubbery blog, where you’ll learn how Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, acquires a Major League Baseball franchise. To learn more about Yachats and its inhabitants—called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns)— please go to this page or go to GoYachats.

For this post, we stray from the Yachats Smelt story to give you a tale of baseball’s early history. It might not be historically accurate, but it is precise.

Why Nine Players on Each Team?
by Dave Baldwin

One day in the 19th century three guys were lounging around ye olde tavern with nothing much to do, so they decided to invent baseball. Let’s call them Alexander Cartwright, Henry Chadwick, and Abner Doubleday because those were, in fact, their names. See Figures 1, 2, and 3.

Figure 1. Alexander Cartwright (middle, second row). The New York Knickerbockers Baseball Club, 1847. Only six members on the team—obviously before the invention of baseball.

When it came to specifying how many players would be in each team’s line-up, they dithered. Finally, Alex said, “I have an idea. Here’s how we’ll resolve this. We’ll take a random number… say, my birth date (4/17/1820) without the slashes and parentheses. Then we’ll scramble the digits good and proper to make a second random number (e.g., 2011874), and subtract the smaller number from the larger. Like, 4171820 minus 2011874 equals 2159946. Am I going too fast?”

Figure 2. Henry Chadwick. An inveterate jokester with an enviable sense of humor. See the sparkle in his eyes?

Abner grunted and Henry groaned. “Good,” Alex enthused. “Now let’s sum up the digits in that number: 2+1+5+9+9+4+6 = 36. Next, we’ll sum those two digits: 3+6 = 9. So that’s how many players we’ll have on each team.”

“Okay,” Abner yipped. “Now, I’ll figure out how many innings we’ll play. But I’m going to use my birth date instead. I was born on June 26, 1819. I’ll shuffle that 6261819 to give me 8619261. So, 8619261 minus 6261819 gives me 2357442. I add those digits to get 27 and add those to get 9. Wow! We’re going to play nine innings.

Figure 3. Abner Doubleday. We’re not sure who taped the squirrel to his head.

Henry scowled. “Wait a minute. I don’t trust you hornswogglers. Let me calculate using my birth date – October 5, 1824.” He whipped up a jumbled version of 1051824 and hammered out the math.

“Holy mongoose, Hank!” Alexander shouted. “You came up with 9, too. That cinches it. Nine it will be.”

Figure 4. Mongoose. Just minding his or her own business. Not claiming to be holy.*

We are indeed fortunate that they stumbled on nine as the number of players on a team, because that is actually the correct number. To demonstrate this, we’ll use the precise total number of players who have played in the majors and the Negro Leagues since that fateful tavern rendezvous: 19,623. We’ll yank out the comma and rearrange that number (randomly, of course) to get 62193. Now we’ll subtract: 62193 minus 19623 equals 42570. Summing these digits gives us 4+2+5+7+0 = 18 and 1+8 = 9. QED.

* Helogale parvula in Korkeasaari zoo. Photo by Miika Silfverberg (MiikaS) from Vantaa, Finland

Next time: We’ll have big news regarding the selection of the Smelt general manager. Very big news. Frightening, too.

NOTE: Our tavern trio sipped a bit more and continued with exuberance, using their method to determine the number of strikes for a strikeout, balls for a walk, outs for a half inning, bases on the infield, foul lines, goal posts, and cows in the outfield. Fortunately, Ms. Eliza Mae Rizzleblurt, proprietor, saw the trio was topsy, stepped in, and made them rewind to the point at which our story ended. Unfortunately, in the only photo we could find of Ms. R., the woman who saved baseball, she had her eyes closed.

NOTE AGAIN: Dave Baldwin borrowed this tale from “Baseball Paradoxes” on his own website, http://www.snakejazz.com .