30 Cool Baseball Facts Most Fans Don't Know

Baseball has been played professionally in the United States since the 1860s, and in that time it has collected more numbers, rituals and strange stories than any other American sport. Here are 30 of the best, grouped so you can jump to what interests you most.

The ball, the bat and the field

1. Every MLB ball is rubbed with mud. Before games, umpires' attendants rub new baseballs with a special mud from a secret spot along a tributary of the Delaware River in New Jersey. The practice, known as Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, takes the shine off and gives pitchers a better grip.
2. A baseball has 108 double stitches. That is 216 individual stitches, all sewn by hand.
3. A ball does not last long. A major league ball is in play for only a handful of pitches on average before it is replaced, so each team goes through dozens of balls in a single game.
4. The pitching distance is 60 feet, 6 inches. The extra six inches date back to 1893, when the distance was moved back to give hitters a chance against harder throwers.
5. The bases are 90 feet apart. The distance is so well balanced that close plays at first base are still decided by fractions of a second, more than 150 years later.
6. No two ballparks are the same. Unlike football fields or basketball courts, baseball outfield dimensions vary from park to park, which is why Fenway Park can have its famous 37-foot "Green Monster" wall in left field.

Records that may never be broken

7. Cy Young won 511 games. No modern pitcher comes close, and today's aces rarely win more than 20 in a season.
8. Nolan Ryan threw seven no-hitters and struck out 5,714 batters, both career records.
9. Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 straight games in 1941. No one has seriously threatened the streak since.
10. Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941. He remains the last major leaguer to finish a season above .400.
11. Cal Ripken Jr. played 2,632 consecutive games from 1982 to 1998, breaking Lou Gehrig's long-standing record of 2,130.
12. Rickey Henderson stole 1,406 bases, nearly 500 more than anyone else in history.
13. Pete Rose has the most hits ever: 4,256.
14. Ichiro Suzuki collected 262 hits in 2004, the most ever in a single season.

Firsts and famous moments

15. The first World Series was played in 1903 between the Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Boston won.
16. Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1997, MLB retired his number 42 for every team, and on Jackie Robinson Day every April 15 all players wear it.
17. Fenway Park is the oldest active MLB ballpark, opened in 1912. Wrigley Field followed in 1914.
18. The first night game in the majors was in 1935 in Cincinnati. Wrigley Field did not get lights until 1988.
19. Perfect games are extremely rare. Only about two dozen have been thrown in more than 140 years of major league history.
20. "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was written in 1908 by songwriters who had never been to a game.

Rules and traditions

21. The seventh-inning stretch has been a tradition for well over a century, and fans in most parks sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during it.
22. The pitch clock changed the game fast. After MLB introduced it in 2023, the average nine-inning game dropped by roughly half an hour, to well under three hours. Our guide to when each season runs shows when you can catch it in person.
23. A "Golden Sombrero" is what fans call striking out four times in one game.
24. Managers wear uniforms. Baseball is the only major American sport where the head coach dresses like the players.
25. The rally cap – wearing a cap inside out or backward to spark a comeback – became a widespread tradition in the 1980s.
26. Home plate is the only base made of rubber and the only one with five sides.

Odd and surprising

27. Babe Ruth started as a pitcher. He was one of the best left-handed pitchers in the league with the Boston Red Sox before becoming the most famous home run hitter in history.
28. The longest game in professional baseball lasted 33 innings. The Pawtucket Red Sox and Rochester Red Wings, two Triple-A teams, started it in April 1981; play was suspended in the early morning hours and the game was finished two months later.
29. The shortest player in MLB history was 3 feet, 7 inches. Eddie Gaedel walked in his only plate appearance in 1951, in a famous publicity stunt by St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck.
30. Baseball is huge outside the US. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Dominican Republic all have passionate baseball cultures, and the Dominican Republic supplies more foreign-born MLB players than any other country. Read more in our look at sports around the world.