Skip to main content

BALLS

My posting tomorrow will feature a thought piece on READING and WATCHING because I am now transitioning from just finishing a book, and starting another, and coincidentally, ending a Netflix series, and starting another.  On this note, I follow the news, but mostly watch sport programs.  Just occurred to me that almost all team sports use some object, usually called a ball.  Here's a ranking of common sport balls from smallest to largest, based on diameter:

SPORT                            DIAMETER (inches)
Squash                            1.56-1.59
Table Tennis                     1.57
Golf                                  1.68
Jai Alai                             2.2
Racquetball                     2.25
Lacrosse                          2.47-2.55
Tennis                               2.575-2.7
Cricket                             2.80-2.86
Field Hockey                    2.81-2.94
Baseball                           2.86-2.94
Pickleball                          2.874-2.972
Polo                                  3.0-3.5
Rugby                               7.27-7.77
Volleyball                          8.15-8.39
Soccer                              8.5-8.8
Basketball                        9.43-9.51

Bet you didn't know there is a range for most.  Ball weight?
SPORT                            WEIGHT (ounces)
Table Tennis                    0.1
Pickleball                        0.78-0.935
Golf                                1.62
Tennis                            1.975-2.095
Baseball                         5-5.25
Softball (slow pitch)          5.875-6.125
Softball (fast pitch)           6.25-7.0
American Football           14.0-15.0
Soccer                             14.8-15.7
Australian Football           15.9-17.6
Basketball                        22
Some information you don't need:
  • Takes 35,000 cow hides to make the 700,000 footballs used in a regulation NFL season.  Super Bowl required 216 balls. 
  • More than 40 million soccer balls are made each year, most of butyl rubber, polyurethane and synthetic leather.
  • 540 million golf balls are annually sold.  Why so many?  I lose a lot of them.  Who really cares, but #1 sold in Amazon is the Callaway Supersoft Golf Ball.
  • The Boston Red Sox order 56,000 baseball for their typical season.  Used balls are sent to their minor league affiliates.
  • Remember the Wilson soccer ball found by Tom Hanks in Cast Away?  In 2018, photographer Mandy Barker requested on social media for people from around the world to send her balls washed up on beaches.  In four months, she accounted for 992 marine debris balls from 144 different beaches.
About balls, or testicles.
  • The southern, right whale has the largest, around 1100 pounds, or 2200 lb/whale.  Whale is around 150,000 pounds, so 1.5% of total weight.
  • The average human male has testicles that weigh 0.053 pounds.  Around 0.355% of total weight.

-

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases.  Very few are aware that a new one,   BA.4.6,  is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples .  However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6.  Here is a  reference  as to what this means.  A series of two injections is involved.  Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab  co-packaged with  cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on  subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics.  Thursday was my pandemic day for years.  Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments.  All these  subvariants  derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms.  One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell.  From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant,  BA.2.86,  also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to  lose hair  for...
Post a Comment
Read more

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota.  Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north.  Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge.  If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic.  Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing.  The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University.  Caught a bus. Was called the  Century 21 Exposition .  Also the Seattle World's Fair.  10 million joined me on a six-month run.  My first. These a...
Post a Comment
Read more