Question 10 in last night's show caused some controversy.
The question, as written is:
SPORTS
- What material is at the very center of an MLB regulation baseball?
Cork
I
had a pretty even answer split between rubber and cork, and one
contestant is a teacher who had actually shown a class a film about it
from one of the ball manufacturers, which showed it was rubber. (She
pulled it up on Youtube after the show.) This question actually made
the difference between the first and second place teams, and might have
put another team into third. I squashed it during the show - I rely
heavily on Rule 5 from the sheet - "Decision on the MC is final" and my
folks are generally okay with this. This one bugged me enough to look
it up today though.
A couple sites gave me conflicting info, so I looked up the actual rules from MLB:
From there, you can pull up the full rules, and sure enough in here:
when I looked down to Rule 1.09, I found this:
Rule 1.09 The ball shall be a sphere formed by yarn wound around a small core of cork, rubber or similar material, covered with two strips of white horsehide or cowhide, tightly stitched together. It shall weigh not less than five nor more than 5 1/4 ounces avoirdupois and measure not less than nine nor more than 9 1/4 inches in circumference.
I'll take care of it at next weeks show, and get the bar to make it up.
Since it's not league play yet, no one was really upset, but during the league things could get a little heated.
(Even though my one team - the one who nitpicked points the most
and questioned every questionable question - got themselves into the
finals and then didn't even bother to show up!)
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