When we’re in Gilbert we attend a few Major League Baseball Spring Training games. This year I came away with two new t-shirt designs. Not to hang in my closet, just in my head.
The one on the left was worn by another fan and was obvious (and funny) enough.
The one on the right was for sale in a Baseballism store at the baseball park and it stopped me. I finally had to ask one of the clerks what it meant. The answer is below . . .
It represents a typical double play, using the players’ position numbers to track the ball’s trajectory:
From the shortstop (#6)
to the second baseman (#4)
to the first baseman (#3) . . .
makes two outs.
D’oh.
Isabel
D’oh, me too.
Takes a lot of lateral thinking to get that.
Tom
Tom – Yes, the layout isn’t right/standard for a column of numbers (with that plus sign at the bottom), but also sure isn’t how you’d lay out a graphic to show the double play – with spatial positions or even just with vectors/arrows. I guess that’s what makes it a good puzzle.
I will try this on a golf buddy who is a baseball nut if I can remember long enough till golf season begins.
Dave – 🙂
I know very little about baseball but I think this is a reference to a poem. Look up Tinker to Evers to Chance and you’ll see.
Marion – “Tinker to Evers to Chance” captures the standard double play, for sure. Although there are other ways it can happen (involving the pitcher, for example, or the second baseman standing in the gap between first and second), this is the most common.