There are some baseball writers working today whose knowledge of players and teams is so vast and thorough that it almost seems as though they’re watching every single baseball game (i.e. everyone on this page who isn’t me). Well, last night I was talking with my old cohort at The Dugout, Nick Dallamora, and we got to wondering: would it be possible for one person to watch every single baseball game in its entirety?
The numbers are about to get kind of filthy.
Is It Possible For One Person To Watch Every Baseball Game In A Season?
Let’s first establish the number of minutes in a year. 60 minutes times 24 hours times 365 days equals precisely 525,600 minutes.
Now let’s establish the number of games we’re talking about. Without accounting for rain-outs, one-game playoffs, or anything else that could push the number up or down by a couple, there are 2,430 regular-season games played every year. We should also include postseason games: using rough estimates, let’s project four games per LDS, 5.5 games per LCS, and 6 games per World Series. That means 33 postseason games, which brings our total to 2,463.
A USA Today story published in 2003 reported that the average length of a big-league baseball game was 2:52. For lack of a better figure, let’s use this one, as it’s probably not far off from the current number. So that’s 172 minutes.
172 minutes times 2,463 games equals 423,636 minutes. That’s 80.6 percent of the minutes there are in a year. So you really could watch every regular season/playoff baseball game if you slept 4.66 hours a night and spent every waking minute watching a (usually pre-recorded, of course) baseball game. Year-round. No breaks, except for the February 29th that rolls around every four years.
Do not do this. You will die.
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