Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Aaron staring up at Bonds

How weird am I for wondering if this is odd?

Barry Bonds ties the home run record on the road (at San Diego) and breaks it at home.
Pete Rose ties the hits record on the road (at Chicago) and breaks it at home.
Hank Aaron ties the home run record on the road (at Cincinnati) and breaks it at home.

What other major career records have been set in the last 25 years? I'm sure I'm forgetting a few since my mind is still wrapped around The Simpsons movie (thumbs-up, by the way), but I can't think of any more, and me thinks it's weird that they all went down like that.

Don't say Cal Ripken's consecutive games played. The league could schedule that one any way it pleased. Just put 2,130 at the start of a long homestand, forget about rainouts spoiling it and prepare the party/crab cakes.

2 comments:

The Professor said...

Its been a while but Mathematically there is a 25% (1 in 4) chance of each records going down like that by chance. For all three to go down like that would be 1 in 64 (4-cubed). But consider that there are considerable outside influences like the team sitting Bonds on Sunday so that he would have a better chance of breaking the record at home. Therefore the "by chance" thing doesn't count. And the odds of all three happening that way are considerably greater.

And while not nearly as big a record (greater if you ask Ricky), I believe the stolen base record was tied and broken at home.

Call of the Game said...

If it were completely random, professor, that would be correct. But you have to consider how frequently (or infrequenly) these things happen.

For instance, Bonds has been hitting home runs at about the pace of one every five games. So if he wee to hit the record-tying homer on the road (50% chance), then the most statistically probable thing to happen is that he hits his next five days later. If you cout five days from any given road game, I bet you'd be home about 80% of the time.

So, while there's still a 50% chance that it will be tied on the road, the fact remains that if it is, the probability is high that it will be broken at home. So the probaility of the whole thing happening like that would likely be more like 30-35%.