I Invented My First Baseball Metric In 1973—TV Number

 By JT 

I was nine and a half years old and I never named it, I didn't know metrics needed a name. In fact, I didn't know the word "metric" then. All I knew is that when baseball players were shown on television batting the TV graphic (another word I didn't know) showed batting average, home runs, and RBI. 

For some silly reason I wanted them to have equal weight and the formula I worked out was very simple—Home runs times 10 plus RBI times 3 and batting average times 1000

So, if a player hit 30 home runs batted .300, and drove in 100 RBI his score would be 900 (300+300+300).

Nate Colbert on the screenshot above is hitting .232 with 22 home runs and 64 RBI. So, his score at the All-Star break would be 232 plus 220 plus 192 = 644. He ended the year at 963 (38 HR, 111 RBI, .250 BA).

So, 900 was very good but get into Babe Ruth'1 1927 season (60-165-.356) and you get a total of an amazing (in my mind) of 1460.

Anyway, not bad for a guy not yet 10 years old. Now, all these years later I am naming it. I dub it "TV Number", the shorthand number that was shown on TV for decades. 

TV Number.