22s, 23s, and Errors in National Pastime
Digging A Little Deeper
22s, 23s, and Errors in National Pastime
Want to see something cool? Well, cool in a real geeky way?
Remember the National Pastime hit and out number card we came up with a few posts ago?
Well, take a look at how play result numbers 22 and 23 are distributed:
Looks familiar, doesn’t it?
Both of those numbers — numbers that are usually reserved for pitchers only — frequently show up on dice rolls that usually contain hit numbers. In fact, only the following “out” dice rolls occasionally contain a 22 or 23:
26 (1 time, a 22)
34 (1 time, a 22)
42 (2 times, both 22)
45 (1 time, a 23)
54 (2 times, both 22)
61 (2 22s and 6 23s — this is the most common “out” number to contain either of these results)
62 (2 22s and 1 23)
64 (2 22s)
This becomes more interesting when we look at some of the players with these unusual results:
Jimmy Dykes of the Philadelphia Athletics (infielder) has the only 22 on dice roll 26.
Bill Dickey of the New York Yankees (catcher) has the only 22 on dice roll 34.
George Sisler of the Boston Braves (infielder) and Elwood English of the Chicago Cubs (infielder) are the only players with a 22 on dice roll 42.
Now, this isn’t the pattern with every single one of those 22 and 23 results. Remember that only pitchers receive a 23, while a handful of position players also received a 22. There are a few pitchers who received a 22 in an unusual position.
However, a disproportionate number of players who received a rare 22 received it on an “out” dice roll.
Error Numbers
This pattern also applies to what are commonly considered “error numbers,” or the play result numbers 15 through 21. Here is where they show up:
We can’t say that these numbers show up only on “hit” dice rolls. However, more often than not, we see these results show up on dice rolls like 51, 31, 35, and sometimes 25.
Why?
I think the biggest question here is why we see this kind of pattern.
I’m not entirely certain. I suspect, however, that Clifford Van Beek used a sort of order of importance for some of the hit numbers.
You’ll notice that 66 and 11 never have play results 15 through 23, for example. Dice roll 33 also never leads to any non-hit play result number, even on pitcher cards.
My guess is that not all “hit” dice rolls were created equal in Clifford Van Beek’s mind. Some, like 31, only occasionally led to a hit, and frequently led to a non-hit play result. Others, like 55, almost always led to a hit, except for the 23 players who received a 22 on that number — each of which were pitchers.
It doesn’t mean that we completely understand what Clifford Van Beek did. However, it does bring us quite a bit closer to understanding his logic. The more we dig in, the less random and arbitrary it all seems.
This pattern will come up again next time, when we’ll take a look at the mysterious play result number 40.