Q: From a Pittsfield, Mass., reader: "In recent baseball history, a triple play occurred in which no defensive player touched the ball. A player could have been struck by it, however. How was this accomplished?"
A: Major league records of all past triple plays show no such listing, according to the Society of American Baseball Research. However, in a 1987 issue of "The National Pastime," an article entitled "Look Ma, No Hands" described the following stranger-than-fiction play from a girls' softball tournament: "With runners on first and second, the batter hit a high pop fly toward the shortstop, who had trouble finding the ball in the sun. The umpire called 'Infield Fly.' That's one out. The runner on first, seeing that the ball was going to drop, put her head down and ran, passing the runner on second. That's two out. The runner on second, hearing footsteps, advanced a few feet off the base, turned to remonstrate with her overzealous teammate, and was hit by the ball as it descended. That's one-two-three and the side was out. Credit all putouts to the unlucky(?) shortstop."
Q: At Boston's Public Gardens, caretakers puzzled over why the eggs of a much-loved swan couple never hatched.
Then came the embarrassing answer …
A: Both swans turned out to be female, then dubbed Juliet and Juliet, says David G. Myers in "Psychology in Everyday Life." At least occasional same-sex relations have been observed in hundreds of species, including grizzlies, gorillas, monkeys, flamingos, owls and penguins (New York City's Central Park Zoo's Silo and Roy). Among rams, for example, some 6 percent to 10 percent (to sheep-breeders, the "duds") shun ewes and instead seek out other males. "Some degree of such behavior seems to be a natural part of the animal world."
Q: "There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numerals, and those who don't."
What's wrong with the speaker's math here?
A: Nothing at all, nor with his sense of whimsy either, as presented by Ian Stewart in "Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities." The "10" here is a binary number as used internally in all modern computers (in base-2) whose numerals "translate" into (1 x 2) + (0 x 1) = 2. (Our everyday decimal system uses base-10). In other words, the missing eight kinds of people are for those who don't understand binary numerals, which of course isn't you, right?
Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@cs.com.
© Bill Sones and Rich Sones, Ph.D.