DISPATCHES By Hank Kalet Fantasy baseball league used as a tool to teach math.
Derrek Lee is off to a fast start.
The Cubs first baseman is among the league leaders in batting average, home runs, runs batted in and nearly every other offensive category in baseball.
And while the Cubs are not exactly off to a quick start, Lee’s offensive prowess has the Rumson Running Roughwriters of the Bob Uecker Memorial Baseball Association off to their fastest start in the team’s inglorious history.
This has me quite happy, of course, because the Roughwriters are owned by a certain newspaper editor with a long infatuation with the summer game. The Roughwriters are one of six original teams in the 10-team league and have managed to make the playoffs just once, two years ago, after a couple of seasons in which my vaunted lineup managed to fade badly during August.
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I’m hoping this year will be different, but even after a 7-1 start one has to wonder (I am a Mets fan, after all, and like all good Mets fans I have earned the right to be a bit cynical about my team). Still, I make my daily check of the box scores, looking to see how Lee and the rest of the Roughwriters have done.
The Roughwriters are not my first fantasy baseball team I won two championships with Chico’s Bail Bonds of the Bruce Boisclair Memorial Baseball League back in the 1980s nor is fantasy baseball my first experience with make-believe games. When I was a kid, I played an array of baseball board and dice games, including Strat-o-Matic, Sports Illustrated All-Time All-Star Baseball and APBA (I still have these last two), invented a number of others (using cards, coins, dice, etc.) and was generally fascinated by the way statistics represented what was happening on the field.
Two teachers Glenn Ferraris and Chris Davis at Brooks Crossing School are using this as a teaching tool. They’ve started a fantasy baseball league for students that forces them to use all of their math skills in an effort to craft the best team possible. Students create teams of eight players, using salary figures assigned by the teachers. Total team salaries are not to exceed $180. This prevents the students from filling their teams only with expensive superstars like Derek Jeter and forces them to think about how they are spending their imaginary money. After all, a couple of high-priced players might seem a good investment but they do not leave you much cash to fill out your roster (a lesson the real New York Yankees may finally be learning).
Once the rosters are filled and the games begin, students are plunged into the world of numbers. Every Friday, they begin the seemingly mundane task of calculating their teams’ statistics and compiling the standings.
The kids have some interesting strategies to build teams one pair built their team with current and former Red Sox, while another made a conscious effort to avoid the big names, focusing instead on the cold, hard numbers. The two teams are leading their respective divisions.
Some may scoff, saying this is all just fun and games. But there is a real math lesson going on here as the kids add up hits and walks and runs batted in, calculate batting averages and tabulate team scores. There is a language to math that can seem daunting to many, a correlation among the numbers that far too many people find difficult to grasp. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that mathematics seems removed from our daily experience.
This is especially true for younger students, who do not see the need to get much beyond the basics of addition and subtraction. Word problems can seem surreal who cares, really, at what point two trains will meet if one is heading east at 85 miles per hour and the other is heading west at 45 miles per hour? If I’m not on the train, why should I care?
For the young baseball fan, however, the mathematics of the game is visible every time Derrek Lee smashes a line drive into the gap. A double equals two total bases, which in my league equals two points. That double also helps elevate Lee’s slugging percentage, on-base percentage and batting average. If he scores, that’s another point for me and one less point for the team that owns the pitcher (hopefully, it’s not one of my guys). The run also would inflate the pitcher’s earned run average.
I believe that my fascination with baseball statistics was at least as important to developing my mathematical abilities as anything my teachers offered. I am no mathematician or statistician, but I think I understand the language of numbers better than most, a talent I attribute to my early years studying the backs of baseball cards, the daily box scores in the newspaper and the weekly statistical tallies in the Sunday papers.
Felix Millan’s batting average and Tom Seaver’s winning percentage meant a whole lot more to me than the infamous two trains. If Millan, who was my favorite Met for a couple of years in the early 1970s, were to get two hits in a game late in the season, that might raise his batting average above .300 (his best Mets average was .290 during the World Series year of 1973) which was far more meaningful than a couple of trains passing each other in the night somewhere outside Albuquerque.
I make no great claims for baseball or for fantasy games in general there are a host of ways to connect math lessons to the things students care about. But baseball offers as good an entry point as anything else. And it is a whole lot of fun. Just ask the owner of the Rumson Running Roughwriters of the Bob Uecker Memorial Baseball Association.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].

