Baseball can be used by parents to unlock the magic of numbers. Whether young baseball fans play or watch, they’ll find their favorite sport even more fun when they do the math. 

by Joan M. Thomas

Within the past decade, countless young people with no inclination to read suddenly became bookworms when introduced to the Harry Potter series. Whatever misgivings adults may have about the works of J. K. Rowling, her positive influence on modern youth is undeniable. Her writing style and her subject matter have enticed children to explore the marvelous world of literature. Likewise, for math, baseball can be a similar key to unlock the magic of numbers in everyday life for kids who reject math, or just find it boring.

Speaking of magic, at the end of the baseball season, the local media may have delivered a daily report on your team's “magic number.” It’s not a difficult concept, but it is definitely math.

The magic number is the number of games a team needs to win in order to assure a spot in post-season play. Each team must play 162 games in a season, so each club’s magic number can change daily.

How well a team fares is determined by its players’ performance. So, many fans follow player averages, such as batting averages, fielding averages, and earned-run averages. Such statistics tell a lot about individual athletes and how they contribute to a team’s wins or losses.

For elementary,  middle school and high school kids who find calculating percentages and using decimals too abstract, following their baseball hero’s daily stats could not only aid their mathematical comprehension, but could also ignite as much of a passion for math as for baseball.

Fantasy games

 And the games don’t even have to be real ones. Dan Flockhart, a former middle school math teacher in Northern California, found a way to get students excited about math through fantasy sports.

Initially, Flockhart devised Fantasy Football and Mathematics, a resource guide for teachers and parents of students in grades five through 12. The games and activities it contained were so successful in their purpose that he created Fantasy Basketball Mathematics and Soccer Mathematics and then Fantasy Baseball and Mathematics: A Resource Guide for Teachers and Parents.

The books' publisher, Jossey-Bass, describes how the program works: “Students create fantasy teams by picking real-life professional baseball players, and then follow their statistics and calculate their teams’ total points using algebraic or non-algebraic methods specifically designed to complement the math skills they’re learning.”

Considering the reported success of its football counterpart, this book could cure many a child of math phobia.

In an ESPN.com story, writer John Barr relates how a San Jose high school math teacher, John Hagen, used Fantasy Football and Mathematics to make a difference. Barr describes the school, Foothill High, as “the high school of last resort,” because it’s for students who can’t make it elsewhere. Hagen told Barr that the fantasy-based curriculum helped underachieving students meet and even surpass the minimum requirements of California’s education standards. That’s just one of a number of testimonials reported on the value of Fantasy Sports in learning math.

“Families can play fantasy sports together, thus providing a bonding experience,” Flockhart says on the Fantasy Sports and Mathematics website. “I’ll never forget a parent conference in which a father began to cry as he told me that his daughter elected to spend time with him for the first time in years, as he watched a 49ers game.”

Calculating the stats

A child can get just as interested in math through baseball simply by participating in or attending real games. That’s as practical an application as one can get.

As American dialect is peppered with baseball terms such as “batting a thousand,” or “O for four,” a kid interested in baseball will come to know that the first example means getting a hit for every at bat, the second means none for four at bats. So, if the player gets two hits in four at bats, he’s batting .250, his batting average or AVG. Most people who follow the sport know that a good hitter bats around .300.

And then there's the earned-run average, the slugging average, even an adjusted on base plus slugging average nornalized to league average and adjusted for home-park factor—and much more.

To some baseball fans, all of this may seem elementary. Yet one must remember that “elementary” school kids may not yet know how to calculate such figures, nor comprehend just what they mean. In fact, many adults do not. That’s why getting into baseball data can have such a positive effect on anyone having difficulty understanding mathematical concepts.

Print and online resources

●  Christopher Jennison’s Baseball Math: Grandslam Activities and Projects for Grades 4-8 delves into the math of home run duels, baseball card profits, team travel budgets, player salaries, and much more. Readers even get to design the stadium of their dreams.

●  There are a number of good books that explain baseball numbers. Parents could use books such as A Mathematician at the Ballpark by Ken Ross to bone up on their own knowledge.

●  The National Baseball Hall of Fame’s website includes a section called Math: Batter Up! It’s designed for teachers, but includes baseball/math problems and activities that parents can easily use, too.

●  The University of Minnesota has a nifty webpage on Baseball and the Pythagorean Theorem.

However our kids learn math, there is no reason why they should come to despise it. With involvement in such true-life activities such as our National Game, they might come to enjoy math as much as sports or anything else.

 

The author of three books, freelance writer and historian Joan M. Thomas also enjoys writing feature stories and essays on current topics. Born in Carroll, Iowa, she now lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband, Bob, and canine pal, Sasha.

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