A Journey to Baseball’s Alternate Universe

Mathematicians run 10,000 simulations of the entire history of major league baseball to supposedly prove that Joe DiMaggio’s 1941 56-consecutive-game hitting streak isn’t really that big a deal. In their models, a slew of other players achieved as long or longer streaks.

Their results are clearly flawed, however, in that many of the players they claim were supposedly capable of doing this never played for the New York Yankees.

★ Sunday, 30 March 2008