Every baseball used by the MLB lasts about seven pitches

Every MLB baseball needs to be rubbed with mud

When baseballs are done being hand-sewn and shipped to an MLB ballpark, they don't go straight to the field. Every ball that is put in play–an average of 100 per game–has to be rubbed with mud to give the ball a better grip. This video introduces the only family licensed to sell mud to MLB and shows what's special about this particular mud.

Before 1920, a single baseball was used throughout a game

During the Deadball Era, pitchers doctored a baseball with spit, nail files, and licorice for a competitive edge, leading to discolored, mangled, and lopsided baseballs by the game's end. This concluded in 1920 when Cleveland Indians star shortstop Ray Chapman was hit in the head by a ball too dirty to see and died. The rules were changed to require an umpire to replace a dirty baseball and outlawed the spitball.

The MLB consist of 30 teams

The league is home to the National and American leagues, which include 780 active players. The MLB season is the longest in professional sports, with 162 games played during the regular season, typically from April through September, ending with the World Series championship in October.

How to identify baseball pitches

You might be familiar with terms like "fastball," "curve ball," and "change up," but identifying the specific elements of each pitch type—not to mention what constitutes the more specific types like "splitter" and "cutter"—can leave even passionate fans stumped. This helpful guide to the most used pitches in the big leagues allows you to become a pro in just a few minutes.

The evolution of the baseball bat

Torpedo bats may be the latest, most powerful kind of baseball bat, but the instrument's history is long. This Smithsonian resource traces the bat's evolution from handmade objects forged by the players to mass-produced marvels of physics designed by companies like Louisville Slugger. Along the way, you'll see some interesting takes on the form, including bats referred to as "mushrooms" and "bananas."

Why professional tennis players are so picky about balls before serving

Just as swimmers shave their bodies before competitions to swim faster, experiments show that tighter, less fluffy balls experience less drag forces when moving through the air and thus produce faster serves at the cost of less control. Players may select a fuzzier ball in scenarios that call for safer, more cautious play.

What happens to golf balls after they're used?

With over 1 billion golf balls produced annually, an estimated 300 million to 1.5 billion are lost worldwide. On average, thousands of balls are left behind on each course, often ending up in ponds, forests, and beaches. While many golf courses recover and reuse some of these balls, studies suggest countless remain unretrieved.

MLB pitchers were charged with benefiting from sports betting

In November 2025, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians were charged with coordinating with sports bettors to enrich themselves and others. In many instances, they shared the kinds of pitches they would throw at specific points in the game. Bettors then placed money on those actions.

The 2026 season will be the first to allow challenges on balls and strikes

The Automated Ball Strike (ABS) technology—first tested in the minor leagues and in MLB's 2025 spring training and All-Star Game—defines the strike zone rather than relying on individual umpires' interpretations of it. Rather than allowing ABS to determine every ball or strike, though, each team will now have a limited number of in-game challenges to umpires' calls, which will be settled by ABS.

Statcast runs machine learning models in the 23-second gap between every pitch

The same Hawk-Eye cameras that track spin rate, exit velocity, and sprint speed also feed proprietary team models that update in near-real time. Some organizations have built streaming pipelines to surface insights mid-at-bat before the next pitch arrives.

The World Cup ball has had 23 different designs

Adidas has supplied the official ball for the last 15 iterations. The first World Cup final featured two different balls: one provided by Argentina and one supplied by Uruguay. Argentina was winning 2-1 before the balls were switched. Uruguay went on to win the match 4-2.

Measuring which nation has the most baseball fans

It's known as America's pastime, but just how devoted are Americans to baseball? FiveThirtyEight outlines several metrics indicating Puerto Rico may have the most devoted fanbase. See how they used an adjusted metric to rank the world's biggest...

A Bay Area lab was supplying MLB players with steroids

The Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, also known as BALCO, began as a modest vitamin shop, but by the 1990s it was at the center of a doping scheme that rocked Major League Baseball and other professional sports.

The original basketball was hand-sewn

When the first basketball landed in a peach basket in 1891, it didn't look like the leather Wilson ball you see on today's NBA courts. The basketball evolved from the nondribbling days, when a hand-sewn ball with stitching like a football was used.

Fenway Park is the oldest professional baseball stadium in use

The legendary park was built in 1912 and is considered hallowed ground for baseball fans, along with iconic venues like Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Some athletes warm up with equipment from other sports

Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani uses a cricket bat; his teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws a javelin. Quarterback CJ Stroud shoots free throws. The reasons are partially physical (it's good to exercise different parts of your body) and partially mental (it's nice to take the pressure off with someone else's game).

The MLB's reserve clause gave owners rights to players after their contracts expired

The clause was added to contracts in 1879, allowing owners to hang on to players after the expiration of their contracts, sometimes in perpetuity.

The rising cost of taking a family to the ballgame

While inflation affects the price of all goods and services across an economy, some hit harder for consumers than others. Taking data from the average cost of tickets all the way down to the number of hot dogs a family would buy, the average pricetag for a family of four to attend a baseball game is now just over $200–making America’s pastime cost-prohibitive for many families.

The Lombardi Trophy is handcrafted from sterling silver each year

Made annually by Tiffany & Co., the Lombardi Trophy is hand-formed from sterling silver, taking months of work and dozens of labor hours before final engraving is completed after the Super Bowl.

Athletes in Mexico are reviving a 3,000-year-old sacred sport

A modern team is working to revive Juego de Pelota, an ancient Mesoamerican team sport played by the Maya, Aztecs, and neighboring cultures. Once central to ritual and community life, the game was outlawed by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

'I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.'

- Baseball legend Babe Ruth (1895-1948)

The quarterback cadence is a unique quirk to the game of football

Only the offense knows when the ball will be snapped, giving the team with the ball the advantage. Common combinations of colors and numbers (like "blue 42") were codes for plays early in the sport, but are now used arbitrarily.

Magic: the Gathering was inspired by baseball cards

Richard Garfield originally pitched a game publisher on a more complex game about programming robots, but he was told that they were looking for something less expensive and more portable. Inspired by the way baseball cards were collected and traded, he came up with the idea for Magic: the Gathering, which gave players packets of random cards, effectively pieces of the whole game, rather than the entire deck.

The lifespan of a dollar bill

Durable, made of a cotton blend, and with billions in circulation, the common dollar bill is made to last. This video from 1440 goes inside the life of the country's paper currency, from printing to purchasing, in this quick 60-second overview.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

Tequila is uniquely prone to busts, as agave plants take 6 years to grow

Most liquors derive from products that are grown annually and age in barrels for years, like whiskey and wine. Tequila comes from blue agave plants in Mexico, which require six years of cultivation before they can be processed. This makes tequila particularly prone to speculative bubbles, like the one occurring in the mid-2020s.

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

Urushiol, the oily toxin in poison ivy, can remain allergenic on clothing for years.

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

See this overview of the firework rules across all 50 states, ranging from a complete ban on non-professional fireworks in Massachusetts to states with more lax rules like Indiana.

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.