A.  Opening

1)      Tell the story of Ted Williams.  Show a picture of Williams and tell of his heroic exploits in World War II and the Korean War.  Explain that on the final day of the 1941 season, his average was .39955 – rounded to the nearest hundredth as .400.  Did he sit out the last two games of the year and protect his .400 average?  Or, did he try for an even higher average and risk his record-setting season?  What would you do if you were Ted Williams?  We’ll find out what happened at the end of this lesson.

2)      Ask what Derek Jeter’s batting average would be if he has one hit in three at bats.  Explain that a decimal representation of that fraction, .333, also represents his batting average.  Next, ask what his average would be if he went two for four in the following day’s game.  Add his numbers from the two games (three hits in seven at bats) to compute a combined batting average (.429) using fractions and decimals.  Now, what would his cumulative batting average be if he goes hitless in three at bats the following day?  The answer: three hits in 10 at bats equal an average of .300.  INSTRUCTOR NOTE: The player’s name and numbers can be changed to reflect a local team or favorite athlete.

B.  Lesson

1)      Using the Batter Up! game guidelines, play two innings of a simulated game where batters (students) complete math problems of varying difficulty.  Students should be organized into teams with lineups.  Correct answers result in singles, doubles, triples or home runs depending on their degree of challenge.  Incorrect answers result in outs.  Play two to three innings of a game, giving each student at least one at bat.

2)      After the final inning of the game, return to the story of Ted Williams.  Ask students to again guess what Ted Williams did on the final day of the season.  Suggest different scenarios that might have resulted if Williams had gone hitless. What if Williams had gotten two hits in eight at bats?  What if Williams had gotten three hits in eight at bats?  What if Williams had gotten four hits in eight at bats? What would have happened to his .400 average in each of these cases?  Would his average have gone up or down?

3)      Reveal Williams’ career statistics.  Ask students to locate his final average for 1941.  Explain that, in the final doubleheader of the season, he chose to play and went to bat eight times.  With six hits in those eight plate appearances, his batting average rose to .406.  No player since then has reached the .400 plateau.

4)      Using an analysis of Ted Williams’ career statistics as the model, distribute baseball cards to the students and ask them to answer various questions related to the data on those cards (e.g. Does anyone have a player with more than 300 home runs? Does anyone have a player who was born in the 1960s?  Does anyone have a shortstop, a pitcher, an outfielder?).

C.  Conclusion

1)      Review with students what has been learned today, including the various mathematical concepts that were used in the game.

2)      Ask students what they have learned about baseball history while playing this game.