Sunday, March 15, 2009

Pi (π) Day & Baseball

I was too busy post this yesterday, but I think it'll work well enough today.

In the wake of yesterday's Pi (π) Day celebration (that's 'pi' as in π = 3.14 = March 14 = 3/14), I thought it might be interesting to see if there are any ballplayers who had a 'Pi (π) Career' - that is, they ended their careers with "314 career _____".

To do this, I used the very easy-to-use and very nifty National Pastime Almanac, a tool that allows you to easily look at any player's career or single-season numbers and to easily search through them. I can't recommend it enough.

Anyhow, I decided to look for any pitchers who ended their career with a 3.14 ERA (minimum of 1,000 IP), or with 314 career wins, saves, or complete games. I also looked for any position players who ended their career with a .314 batting average (minimum of 1,000 games played) or with 314 career home runs or doubles. (I chose these stats because they were all positive stats that a long-time player could all realistically achieve) To top it off, I decided to look for players who ended their career with 314 career Win Shares. There are actually only a very few players who meet any of these criteria, so it works out well for us here.

Without further ado, here are the 'Pi (π) Career' players:

Pitching
3.14 ERA (min. 1,000 IP): Bert Gallia, Leon Cadore, Tug McGraw, Mike Marshall
314 Wins: Gaylord Perry
314 Complete Games: Joe McGinnity, Burleigh Grimes
314 Saves: Robb Nen

Batting
.314 Average (min. 1,000 Games): Bibb Falk, Cecil Travis, Manny Ramirez*, Nomar Garciaparra*
314 HR: Reggie Smith
314 Doubles: Pete Fox

314 Win Shares: Bill Dickey, Pee Wee Reese, Edd Roush

Personally, I think that these players should be remembered every Pi Day (especially the less familiar names, like Bibb Falk or Bert Gallia). I'd love to hear any other 'Pi (π) Career' values that others might be able to come up with.

2 comments:

tHeMARksMiTh said...

Oh so close, Jeff Francoeur's career OBP is .312.

Nice post, Lar.

Ron Rollins said...

Good one. Nice work.