Fantasy Baseball has evolved into a significant phenomenon from shaky beginnings. Baseball has helped to look out for generations’ interests as the de facto national sport of the United States. Baseball, nicknamed the “Cultural Pastime,” has long been a staple of American culture. Jump to information on baseball clubs, baseball bats, and baseball teams.
1) For 455 straight nights between 1995 and 2001, every seat at Jacobs Field was sold out. In recognition of their fans, the Cleveland Indians retired the number 455.
2) Wrigley Field in Chicago was the last major league stadium to add lighting in 1988. Before then, the Cubs lacked lighting and had to play all of their home games through the day.
3) The most famous ballpark food item is hot dogs. During the 2014 primary league season, baseball fans consumed 21,357,316 hot dogs and 5,508,887 sausages. That’s enough hot dogs to extend from Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium to Chicago’s Wrigley Field.
4) Jimmy Piersall of the Boston Red Sox hit his 100th home run by circling the bases backward. He was a strange player who inspired the book Fear Strikes Out, which chronicled his bipolar disorder war.
5) Gayle Gardner (1950– ) of NBC has become the first woman to broadcast Major League Baseball events for a television network in 1989.
6) In his farewell speech after retiring from baseball due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig said that he was “the luckiest guy on the face of the earth.” His statement has been dubbed “Baseball’s Gettysburg Address.”
7) Fans can differentiate between the away team and the home team when visiting teams’ sport (at least mostly) grey jerseys. Traveling teams didn’t have time to wash their clothes in the late 1800s, so they wore grey to cover the mud.
8) On August 26, 1939, the first professional baseball game was televised on television. Brooklyn and Cincinnati faced off in a doubleheader.
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9) With 24 Hall of Famers, the San Francisco Giants are the team with the most players in the Hall of Fame.
10) There has never been a woman in a major league baseball game. Effa Louise Manley (1897–1981), an American sports administrator, was the first and only woman allowed back into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
11) A major league baseball pitch has a lifespan of 5–7 pitches. Approximately 70 balls are used in a standard game.
12) Baseball began in the United States and has since expanded around the world. The International Baseball Federation currently has over 100 representatives from around the world. Outside of the United States, Japan has the highest professional baseball league.
13) Toni Stone (1921–1996) was the first of three female baseball players in the Negro League’s 40-year existence. She was dubbed the “girl Jackie Robinson” by baseball historians. She was the league’s fourth-best batter at one point in 1953.
14) Today’s baseball games last almost three hours, but on September 28, 1919, the longest game ever played in the major leagues lasted just 51 minutes. At the Polo Grounds, the New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-1.
15) On May 1, 1920, the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Boston Braves in a Major League Baseball game with the most innings ever played.
16) When the Florida Marlins faced the Cincinnati Reds in 2011, the record for the fewest fans at a baseball game was set. Just 347 people watched the game due to Hurricane Irene.
17) After eight teams were accused of losing the 1919 World Series, the Chicago White Sox were called the “Black Sox.” The eight players, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, one of baseball’s all-time great pitchers, were barred from the game for the rest of their lives. He is now ineligible for the Hall of Fame when he was thrown out.