First Perfect Game

The first perfect game ever was thrown on June 12, 1880 by Lee Richmond, a left-handed pitcher for the Worcester Ruby Legs.

Bumgarner

At only 25 years of age, Madison Bumgarner has already appeared in three World Series. His performance in those series is even more impressive: 4 wins, 0 losses, 1 save, 31 strikeouts, 0.53 WHIP, .121 BAA, and most outstanding is a 0.25 ERA, the lowest ever. He could never appear in another World Series, and still be talked about as being one of the best World Series pitchers of all time!

San Francisco Giants Dynasty

For the third time in five years, the San Francisco Giants are World Series champions!

Wild Card World Series

This year's American League and National League representatives in the World Series feature the last two teams to qualify for the postseason: The Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants. These two wild card teams both posted sub 90 win seasons, marking the first time that both teams in the World Series won less than 90 games.

Grand Slam

San Francisco Giants' Brandon Crawford became the first shortstop to hit a postseason Grand Slam during their Wild Card game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at the beginning of this month.

Identical Records

This year, three different "cross-town" rivals finished with identical records. The Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals both went 96-66, the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's went 88-74, and the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox went 73-89.

California Love

For the first time ever, four teams from California have made the Major League Baseball Playoffs.

Sorry San Diego.

Three Wins

Jerome Williams beat the Oakland Athletics for the third time this weekend. While not uncommon for a pitcher to beat a team three times in a season, the manner in which he did it was unique.

Williams pitched for three teams this season: Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, and Philadelphia Phillies. His wins against the A's came while on a different team, thus becoming the first pitcher to beat a team three time in a season while being on a different team each time.

The Finger

We often see baseball players (and the general public) use the middle finger as an obscene hand gesture, but have you ever thought to yourself where "the bird" first appeared? While it's not clear how it originated in America,  we do know that the first documented appearance of the finger in the United States was in 1886 when Old Hoss Radbourn, a baseball pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters, was photographed giving it to a member of the rival New York Giants. That's another first brought to you by baseball!

Check out the finger, back row, far left.

Interesting Matchup

Today marks the anniversary of the following article, published in the September 1, 1926 edition of The Washington Post:

More information on this game can be found in Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic article.

Television

Tomorrow will be the 75th anniversary of the first time a Major League Baseball game was televised.

Prior to August 26, 1939, the only way you could watch Major League Baseball was by actually going to the ballpark. Radio had been around since 1921, but to actually see a game required admission to a ballpark.

The first game televised was a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. Red Barber opened up by saying  "This is Red Barber speaking. Let me say hello to you all."

The Reds won the first game, 5-2, while the Dodgers took the second, 6-1.


Here's Dodgers announcer Vin Scully with some thoughts:

Take What You Need

In 1990, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Don Carman came up with a creative way to deal with the trough of reporters who would continually ask the same repetitive questions.

He came up with a list of responses, which he posted on his locker. “You saw the game,” he told reporters. “Take what you need.”

• I’m just glad to be here. I just want to help the club any way I can.
• Baseball’s a funny game.
• I’d rather be lucky than good.
• We’re going to take the season one game at a time.
• You’re only as good as your last game (last at-bat).
• This game has really changed.
• If we stay healthy we should be right there.
• It takes 24 (25) players.
• We need two more players to take us over the top: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
• We have a different hero every day.
• We’ll get ‘em tomorrow.
• This team seems ready to gel.
• With a couple breaks, we win that game.
• That All-Star voting is a joke.
• The catcher and I were on the same wavelength.
• I just went right at ‘em.
• I did my best, and that’s all I can do.
• You just can’t pitch behind.
• That’s the name of the game.
• We’ve got to have fun.
• I didn’t have my good stuff, but I battled ‘em.
• Give the guy some credit; he hit a good pitch.
• Hey, we were due to catch a break or two.
• Yes.
• No.
• That’s why they pay him _____ million dollars.
• Even I could have hit that pitch.
• I know you are, but what am I?
• I was getting my off-speed stuff over so they couldn’t sit on the fastball.
• I had my at ‘em ball going today.
• I had some great plays made behind me tonight.
• I couldn’t have done it without my teammates.
• You saw it … write it.
• I just wanted to go as hard as I could as long as I could.
• I’m seeing the ball real good.
• I hit that ball good.
• I don’t get paid to hit.

Haiku

Masaoka Shiki is an esteemed member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. A baseball field in Ueno, Japan bears his name in his honor; however, he wasn't inducted to the hall based on the talent he showed on the field.

Shiki was introduced to baseball at his preparatory school in 1884, just 12 years after American teacher Horace Wilson first introduced it to his students at Tokyo University. Shiki was a writer, and he composed nine baseball haiku, beginning in 1890, making him the first Japanese writer to use the game as a literary subject:

spring breeze
this grassy field makes me
want to play catch

--- 

the trick
to ball catching
the willow in a breeze 

---

under a faraway sky
the people of America
began baseball
I can watch it
forever

Throughout his career Shiki wrote many different literary works about baseball, and he made translations of baseball terms that are still in use today.

Origins

History tells us that baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday in 1839. It is now generally accepted that this is more of a myth, than a fact. So then, when and where was baseball invented? Is it really the great American pastime, or do we owe the origin of the sport to Mother England?

Well, in April 2004, Pittsfield, Massachusetts received national publicity for a 1791 bylaw, which is believed to be the earliest written reference to baseball in North America. The transcription goes:

At a legal Meeting of the Inhabitants of the Town of Pittsfield qualified to vote in Town Meetings, holden on Monday the fifth day of Sept. 1791 Voted 

The following ByeLaw, for the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House in said Town ______ viz, 

Be it ordained by the said Inhabitants that no Person, an Inhabitant of said Town, shall be permitted to play at any Game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Batball, Football, Cat, Fives or any other Game or Games with Balls within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House __ and every such Person who shall play at any of the said Games or other Games with Balls within the Distance aforesaid, shall for any Instance thereof, forfeit the Sum of five schillings to be recovered by Action of Debt brought before any Justice of the Peace to the Use of the Person who shall sue and prosecute therefor _____ 

And be it further ordained that in every Instance where any Minor shall be guilty of a Breach of this Law, his Parent, Master, Mistress or Guardian shall forfeit the like Sum to be recovered in Manner and to the Use aforesaid ____

So does mean American wins? Not quite! The Oxford English Dictionary now has an example of baseball being used in written form dating from 1748: “Now, in the winter, in a large room, they divert themselves at base-ball, a play all who are, or have been, schoolboys, are well acquainted with.” This entry was written by an English person, giving more validity to the notion that “America’s game” evolved in England and was imported to the New World in the 18th century.

2,000,000 strikeouts

During yesterday's Kansas City Royals at Cleveland Indians Major League game, Indians pitcher Danny Salazar struck out Royals' Norichika Aoki swinging with a 98-mph fastball in the bottom of the 7th inning, his 7th, and last, strikeout of the game. This was the last pitch of a quality outing for Salazar, but he did something much more important than help the Tribe win. With that strikeout, he helped accomplish a historic feat: the 2 millionth strikeout in Major League history!

Danny Salazar

It took until 1976 (beginning in 1876) for 1,000,000 strikeouts to happen, but the pace has picked up since then. You can thank strikeout king, Nolan Ryan, for 5,714 of those Ks. That works out to about one in every 350 of those 2,000,000 belonging to the Ryan Express.

Stadium Dimensions

The following image was taken from visual.ly, and it shows you the variance in different ball park dimensions. As the site explains, unlike other professional sports, baseball games are played on fields that vary in size from park to park, since the only rules on size of field regulate only the location and height of the pitchers mound and the distance between bases. Thus, no two baseball stadiums are alike!

Baseball And Disney

We ran across a short YouTube video describing Disney's love affair with America's pastime. It's worth a view.

World's Highest Catch

In 1939, San Francisco Seals catcher Joe Sprinz attempted to set a Guinness World Record at that year's World's Fair by catching a baseball which would be dropped from a Goodyear blimp, a good 800 feet above ground. It seems that everyone forgot about a little thing we like to call physics, involving gravity and terminal velocity.

Sprinz missed the first four balls dropped. The got a good angle on the fifth one, and seemed destined to make the catch. It's estimated that by the time the ball hit Sprinz glove, it was traveling around 150 miles an hour. The force of the ball caused his glove to slam into his face, fracturing his jaw and knocking out five teeth in the process.

World Series Champions

I found a neat infographic from Scott J. Haselwood regarding past World Series champions on his website. In it, each team is represented by a circle and the size of each circle represents the total number of World Series wins for each team. It is neat that he was able to incorporate that fact that some teams have World Series from different cities.

Tony Gwynn

One of the game's greatest players passed away last Monday. Tony Gwynn was a lifelong San Diego Padre, and was known for both the impact he made on the field and off the field.

Speaking of the former, here are some ridiculous stats on Gwynn:

• Tony Gwynn struck out 434 times in 10,232 plate appearances (PA). He faced Pedro Martinez 36 times, and never struck out. He faced Curt Schilling 43 times, striking out only twice. Both pitchers are members of the 3000 K club. Greg Maddux never struck him out.
• Tony Gwynn lifetime only had 434 strikeouts in 10,232 PAs over 20 years. For some perspective, Mark Reynolds had 434 strikeouts in 1258 PAs in 2009-10.
• Select 3000 hit club members, % of PA's they struck out:
• Tony Gwynn 4.2%
• Craig Biggio 14.0%
• Derek Jeter 14.6%
• Wade Boggs 6.9%
• Rod Carew 9.7%
• Pete Rose 7.2%
• Paul Molitor 10.2%
• Tony Gwynn could have gone 0-for-4 in another 295 games and still had a lifetime batting average over .300.

It's also well known that Tony Gwynn is the only player to seriously come close to batting .400 for a seaon since Ted Williams did it in 1941. The guys over at Baseball Reference actually broke down a stretch of 162 games (the equivalent of a season) where Gwynn hit over .400. Had it not been for the baseball strike in 1994, we may have seen it occur during a standard season.

RIP Tony.

The Spy

Moe Berg had a 15-year Major League career spanning four different teams. It wasn't his achievements on the field that set him apart though, rather it was the profession he chose after putting away his bat that sets him apart.

At seven-years-old, Berg began playing baseball. More importantly was the intellect he showed at an early age, speaking seven languages. Berg went on to study modern languages at Princeton, where he continued to play baseball, often choosing to speak only in Latin or Sanskrit on the field. After graduating magna cum laude from Princeton, Berg studied French at the Sorbonne in Paris and law at Columbia University.

After 15 undistinguished seasons as a ballplayer, he went to work as a spy for the United States during World War II, parachuting into Yugoslavia for the Office of Strategic Services and interviewing Italian physicists about the German nuclear program. He spent 10 years working as a spy. His baseball card is on display at CIA headquarters.

Berg died in 1972, never getting around to writing his memoir where he planned to tell his entire story. Some are left to wonder whether his baseball career was also a big rouse, a coverup for the American spy.

Eddie Gaedel

There's a player who has his jersey hanging at the Baseball Hall of Fame. His on-base percentage was an unbelievable 1.000, but this isn't the reason why jersey number "1/8" is in the Hall.

Eddie Gaedel played one game for the St. Louis Browns and had one at bat. Gaedel was a dwarf signed by the Browns in 1951 to help out sales. With legitimate contract in hand, he took his at bat measuring 3'7". This made his strike zone a meager inch and a half in height. The opposing pitcher that day, Detroit Tigers' pitcher Bob Cain, threw four straight balls, all high. Gaedel took his base and was replaced by pinch-runner Jim Delsing. The 18,369 fans in attendance gave Gaedel a standing ovation.

First Pitch

Last week, rapper 50 cent threw out the ceremonial first pitch during the New York Mets/ Pittsburgh Pirates game. Here's the video below:

As the announcer says, his pitch was "not great." But was it the worst ever? A chart generated by the Washington Post suggest that it may indeed be the worst first pitch ever. While it was "highly unscientific," it's still fun to see where different people's pitches ended up.

Phantom Players

There's a neat bit written by Greg Ross over at Futility Closet regarding the presence of "phantom players" in the record books:

You can’t always rely on baseball’s record books — they’re haunted by “phantom” players. According to one box score, a player named Lou Proctor walked as a pinch hitter for the St. Louis Browns against the Boston Red Sox on May 13, 1912. It turns out that Lou Proctor was really a Cleveland telegraph operator who had inserted his own name in place of Pete Compton’s. More than two dozen such errors have been uncovered; this one wasn’t found until the mid-1980s.

There's a small collection of these players listed at Wikipedia.

Good Grief!

Charlie Brown’s baseball team has a win-loss record of 2-930.

Hit By Pitch

August 16, 1920 is a day that would go down in baseball infamy. Late that afternoon at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, Cleveland Indians' shortstop Ray Chapman stepped into the batter’s box for what would be the very last time in his life. And no, he wasn't retiring from baseball.

During the at bat, Chapman squared up, ready to bunt, but New York Yankees' pitcher Carl Mays threw a submariner that got away. The ball struck Chapman right on the temple, with the resulting hit being so loud that Mays actually fielded the ball and threw to first, thinking that perhaps Chapman had made contact with his bat.

In fact, Chapman never regained consciousness and died next day, the only major-league player ever to have suffered fatal injuries in a game.

The Lost Art Of The Autograph

Baseball and autographs go hand in hand. If you've been fortunate enough to have gotten a ball signed the last time you were at the park, you may have also asked the player to write down their number on it. Chances are, if you haven't, other people may have a hard time distinguishing whose autograph that actually belong to. Case in point, this autograph:

Figured it out yet?






This Johnny Hancock belongs to none other than former Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants. It would be hard for almost anyone who wasn't familiar with his style of signature to be able to say it belonged to him. He isn't alone. As players today are asked more and more often to sign autographs for fans, baseball card companies, and other promotions, they are forced to make a decision: With the small amount of time allotted for autographs, should I sign less autographs, or should I modify my signature to something quicker to sign, in order to increase the amount of things I can sign? Most players these days choose the latter.

It wasn't always this. Feast your eyes on these two autographs and see if you have better luck figuring out who they belonged to:

That was a lot easier, right? Up top, you have the dean of the dignified autograph, former Minnesota Twins great Harmon Killebrew. At the bottom? I really hope I don't have to tell you that that belongs to the Great Bambino, Babe Ruth.

For more reading, check out this recent New York Times article.

A Map Of Baseball Nation

The New York Times recently published a map of the United States, overlaid with colored regions which represent fan support for a particular baseball club in that area. You can click to zoom in, and find that the map is broken down by zip code. Each zip code also lists other favorite teams in the area. This aggregate data was provided by Facebook, based on who users have listed as their favorite team.

You have to feel a little bit bad for teams like the Oakland Athletics and the New York Mets, who have no representation on the large map.

Proposal

If you're considering proposing to your significant other at a ball park this year, fear not! The folks over at swimmingly.com have reached out to every stadium and have compiled a neat graphic, shown below, giving you the cost to propose. Make sure to check out the entire article for the full details.

Tattoo for Season Tickets?

The Syracuse Chiefs, an affiliate of MLB's Washington Nationals, has come up with an unusual promotion.

On July 1, the Chiefs will hold Carmelo's Ink City Tattoo Night at NBT Bank Stadium. Any fan at that game who gets a tattoo of a Chiefs logo will also earn free general admission tickets to Chiefs games for the rest of their lives. The tattoos at the game will be applied for free. (via Syracuse.com)

The team has verified this on their website. For those of you curious as to what the logo looks like, here it is:

Not a bad logo, I could see some die-hards jumping at this opportunity. Would you do it? Will you do it? We're very curious to see how this turns out for the Chiefs.

Masanori Murakami

Masahiro Tanaka has been on a tear this spring training season, giving New York Yankees fans hope that their newly signed Japanese star will help their team get back into the playoffs. While it has become commonplace for Major League Baseball to sign Japanese players from the Nippon Professional Baseball league, things were not always this way.

In 1964, three Japanese baseball players from the Osaka Nankai Hawks arrived in Arizona at the San Francisco Giants' Spring Training camp in Casa Grande, Arizona. These three pitchers were all headed to Single-A Fresno in what was termed an "exchange-student" type of event. It was expected the the Giants would eventually send over three players as well. On September 1st, one of those three, Masanori Murakami, was called up to pitch in the bigs (pitching a scoreless inning against the New York Mets), thus becoming the first Japanese pitcher in Major League history. In that final month of the season, the southpaw had nine relief appearances, a 1.80 ERA and a save. He came back the following year, where he appeared in 45 games, starting one of them, and going 4-1 with eight saves and a 3.75 ERA.

Alas, he would not return to MLB after 1965 and that ended what could have been a potentially good Major League career. There were still fresh wounds from World War II and resentment towards Japan, with Giants manager Herman Franks receiving death threats for pitching Murakami. In fact, Franks ended up needing FBI protection for a period of time. It took another 31 years for Hideo Nomo to become the second Japanese player to play for a Major League team, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Cactus & Grapefruit Leagues

With Spring Training well underway, baseball's teams are split between the Cactus League in Arizona, and the Grapefruit League in Florida. While attempting to uncover any tidbits regarding the naming of the leagues, we ran into some interesting bits of information.

Earlier this month, Milwaukee Brewers' reliever Francisco Rodriguez stepped on a cactus and was unable to make his first start of spring. A cactus related injury in the Cactus League. What about funky Grapefruit related injuries in the Grapefruit League? Let's go back to 1915 for this one.

The Brooklyn Dodgers were in Daytona Beach, Florida for that year's training camp. Their newish manager, Wilbert Robinson, was about to a part of an incident for which he would come to be best known for. Ruth Law, a local aviator, was making daily flights in the area, dropping golf balls as a publicity gimmick for a local golf course. Someone came up with the great idea of catching a baseball dropped from the plane. When none of the players found the guts to try to catch it, Robinson volunteered. The day came, and Law forgot the baseball back in her hotel room. Improvising, she substituted a grapefruit from the lunch of one of her ground crew at the last minute. The grapefruit landed in Robinson's mitt and exploded, knocking him down and drenching him in warm Grapefruit juice. Thinking he was covered in his own blood, Robbie called for help. The players rushed over and began ribbing him when they realized what had happened. Thus, we have the closest grapefruit related injury in the Grapefruit League.

Lost Home Runs

There's a curious page being hosted over at Retrosheet.org that has to do with the subject of lost home runs. The premise is simple: There have been home runs hit over the years that do not appear on any stat sheets. How can this be so? Well, that's where it gets interesting.

There are a variety of reasons why a home run would not appear in a stat sheet. Some of these are attributed to weather. The most reason example happened on May 11, 2011. The Oakland Athletics were paying a visit to the Texas Rangers. The teams managed to get in 3 and a half innings of playing time before a two hour rain delay ultimately caused the game to be postponed. Mitch Moreland had hit his first career grand slam in the third, but you won't find a mention of that hit anywhere in the stat sheets. The game was replayed later on, and Moreland did not repeat his feat.

Other reasons why home runs are lost to history are due to human error. For example, on May 19th 2010 Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers hit what would have been his second home run of a game against the Baltimore Orioles. His fly cleared the 14-foot fence in left field, but somehow made its way back to the field. The ball was thus ruled in play. The crew chief admitted after the game that the umpires were wrong, and he should have watched the replay and then overturned the call. Another home run stricken from the books.

There are another neat examples on that page demonstrating lost home runs. Make sure to give it a glance over!

Chief Tokohama

Last week (March 11th, to be precise) The History Channel website highlighted a baseball related "This Day in History." It related to the first African-American baseball player, and it was not about Jackie Robinson.

On this day in 1901, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports the signing of a mysterious player named "Chief Tokohama" to baseball’s Baltimore Orioles by manager John McGraw. Chief Tokohama was later revealed to be Charlie Grant, an African-American second baseman. McGraw was attempting to draw upon the great untapped resource of African-American baseball talent in the face of baseball’s unspoken rule banning black players from the major leagues.

John McGraw, manager of the Orioles from 1899 to 1902 and the New York Giants from 1902 to 1932, had great respect for African-Americans’ baseball abilities and was at the forefront of the effort to integrate the major leagues. Reporters often spotted McGraw in the stands at Negro League games, watching and taking notes, and later copying the strategies used by black teams. In fact, legend has long held that McGraw had pitcher and Negro National League founder Rube Foster teach Giants star Christy Matthewson how to throw his "fadeaway" pitch. McGraw also held exhibition games between his team and Negro League teams, providing them with a good payday and publicity. In October 1917, Negro Leaguer "Smokey" Joe Williams pitched against the National League champion Giants, striking out 20 batters before losing 1-0 on an error in the 10th inning. Had records been kept in those exhibitions, the mark of 20 strikeouts would stood for 69 seasons. McGraw was not the only big leaguer who favored integration, or took up the cause. Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Ted Williams, Dizzy Dean, Paul Waner, Lloyd Waner and Jimmie Foxx were among the players who would barnstorm with all-star Negro League teams in the off-season before black players were allowed to play with them in the regular season. In 1901, however, integration was still a long way off.

After Grant signed with the Orioles as Chief Tokohama, Chicago White Sox owner Charlie Comiskey discovered his real identity and led the charge to ban him from the league. Grant ended up spending the 1901 season playing stand-out second base for the all-black Columbia Giants. John McGraw went on to win eight National League pennants as the manager of the New York Giants, as well as three World Series. He died in 1934, 12 years before Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, finally integrating Major League Baseball.

It begs the question what would have happened if they would have continued to allow Grant to play baseball? How would the game have evolved, with this new talent pool entering the game so early on? We'll never know.

21 Aces

A special anniversary in the baseball world happened last Friday, March 7th. This nugget comes from The Writer's Almanac radio show:

On this date in 1857 it was wisely decided that a baseball game would be made up of nine innings instead of 21 "aces" or runs.

The National Association of Baseball Players decided this. They were a group of men in New York and Brooklyn baseball clubs playing under what was known as the "Knickerbocker Rules," and they had just gotten together formally for the first time in January.

They had agreed that baseball was "manly and healthful" and should be promoted that way to young men as, they told the paper, an "alternative to billiards ... and other unmentionable night amusements." And they had done away with the practice of hitting the runner with a thrown ball to get him out, which caused fistfights.

But they knew that spectators were coming to baseball games, and under the Knickerbocker Rules a game could be over very quickly. So they changed the rules so as not to disappoint the sport's new fans, which might pay money to see them.

With the way pitchers are dominating the game these days, it's a good thing this rule was changed!

Mexican Baseball

Our neighbors to the south are typically thought of to be a soccer nation; however, that doesn't mean they aren't huge baseball fans as well!

Craig Robinson from www.flipflopflyball.com has a great infographic showing all the leagues and teams in Mexico. You can see it below:

Perhaps this explains the current 17 major leaguers of Mexican nationality!

Home Plate

Happy New Year! Very eager for the beginning of the 2014 baseball season. On that note, isn't great that this sport is not split into two years, like all other major sports? There is something beautiful about being able to bookmark each season in one year.

For this week's post, we will delve back into an official MLB baseball rule that was recently brought to my attention.

1.05 Home base shall be marked by a five-sided slab of whitened rubber. It shall be a 17-inch square with two of the corners removed so that one edge is 17 inches long, two adjacent sides are 8 1/2 inches and the remaining two sides are 12 inches and set at an angle to make a point. It shall be set in the ground with the point at the intersection of the lines extending from home base to first base and to third base; with the 17-inch edge facing the pitcher’s plate, and the two 12-inch edges coinciding with the first and third base lines. The top edges of home base shall be beveled and the base shall be fixed in the ground level with the ground surface

That looks something like this:

The rule doesn't explicitly state that the angle between the two sides that are 12 inches in length has to be a 90 degree, right angle, but it does state that baselines at first base and third base should be 90 degree, as well as at second base, thus necessitating that this angle be 90 degree at home plate. This is IMPOSSIBLE!

Thinking back to our geometry days, the Pythagorean theorem tells us that a² + b² = c². Here, "a" equals 12 inches, "b" equals 12 inches, and "c" equals 17 inches. This is where it falls apart. 12² + 12² = 288, but 17²  = 289! It just doesn't work!

It's definitely amusing to think that the official MLB rule book specifies a home plate shape that is impossible!