Beaverball, my book about a season with the MIT baseball team, includes stories about how we sometimes shared a word or fact “of the day” while stretching at the start of practice. At my high school in California, when the baseball and football teams warmed-up, we tended to talk about girls. At MIT, we talked baseball and facts like, “We are in living in the Cenozoic Era, which began 65 million years ago.”[1]

One time, pitcher and outfielder Nate Ritter, who was studying for the MCAT at the time, informed us that the Bubonic Plague killed one-third of Europe in 1346. I remember how we looked at each other, unsure how this info was going to help us win games or hit curveballs. Ritter, who did become a doctor, seemed happy with this.

While formidable, the baseball team’s trivia talent had limits. Eddie Kohler from Brooklyn, who helped pay his way through MIT by working at Macy’s, could recall as many factoids as anyone on the team. Still, when he auditioned for the television game show Jeopardy, he couldn’t get past a category on French literature.[2]

Facts must still be checked. Co-captain Ian Somerville once explained how the large statues of men on horses found in parks have special meanings, that the way the horse is depicted says something about the rider. For example, if both front hooves are in the air, the man died in battle. If one hoof is in the air, the man died later of wounds from battle. If no hooves are in the air, the person died of natural causes. However, we later learned that this was an urban legend.

This sharing of knowledge, one fact or word at a time, cultivated a certain curiosity and comfort with questioning what we already thought we knew or believed. Pulling the dictionary off the shelf or rethinking a pre-conceived notion was part of the fun. We enjoyed “getting smarter” about the world and how things worked.

I still love new words, tidbits, and facts. For example, over the past week I learned that the capita of Ghana is Accra (while doing a crossword puzzle), that Rihanna is from Barbados (sorry, kids, I didn’t know that), and that the Karman Line is a boundary 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface generally accepted as the beginning of space. (Which differs from the “Mendoza Line” of a .200 batting average in baseball, named for former Major League shortstop Mario Mendoza.[3])

I love learning and knowing things. Based on the popularity of Wordle, crosswords, and trivia nights, others do, too. If you learn at least one new thing per day, then you are better off, regardless of how else the day goes. There is so much to know.

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[1] Thanks to Pete Hinteregger, our starting shortstop and star pitcher, for that one.

[2] RIP Alex Trebek.

[3] If hitting below the Mendoza Line, perhaps consider a different sport or line of work.