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Lesser-Known Stats from the 2009 Major League Baseball Season Courtesy of the Elias Sports Bureau

With his call of the 2009 Home Run Derby, ESPN’s Chris Berman registered an 88.37 on the BOOR Scale (a scientific measure of the constriction of a listener’s sphincter in response to irritant verbal stimuli), the third highest mark posted since the invention of the television. Only Tim McCarver, with an 89.04 during Game 3 of the 2004 A.L.C.S., and Howard Cosell, with his epochal 128.49 for Game 2 of the 1978 World Series, have ever scored higher.

With a stolen base on the final day of the season, California Angels infielder Maicer Izturis became just the fifth player in Major League history and the first since 1958 to join the exclusive 13 x 13 Club (at least 13 singles, 13 doubles, 13 triples, 13 home runs, 13 R.B.I.s, 13 errors, 13 stolen bases, 13 days on the D.L. and an 0 for 13 in a Friday the 13th double-header all in a single season while wearing the number 13, having 13 letters in his name and wearing a size 13 shoe).

Texas Rangers D.H. Scott Brayton become the first big-leaguer in the post–Steroid Era to register a methyltestosterone level of at least 25 pg/ml, an H.G.H. level of at least 75 ng/ml, and a Stanozolol level of at least 0.2 ng/L while also testing positive for marijuana, Oxycontin and Panamanian horse crank in a single urine sample.

Since the club began tracking the statistic in 1996, Justin Russo, age 11 months, 23 days, became the fourth youngest Red Sox fan in Fenway Park history to utter a clearly audible “Jeter Sucks” at the Sox–Yankees game on August 21st. And Cynthia Jenkins of Fort Wayne, Indiana, became just the sixth woman outside of New England to declare that not only would she not want the Yankee captain to marry her daughter, but she also found him “kind of creepy and ethnic looking.”

Chicago Cubs right fielder Alfonso Soriano led the Majors with a SUQ (Salary Underperformance Quotient) of 8.76. Soriano’s SUQ [(annual salary) x (batting average) x (H.R.) ÷ (days spent on D.L.) x (number of routine fly balls misplayed into triples) ÷ (number of at bats in which player stood and posed at home plate after hitting a long fly ball which ultimately landed on the warning track resulting in only a long single, thereby costing his team at least one run)] was the fifth highest posted since the dawn of free agency.

Right-hander Tim Mortensen of the Arizona Diamondbacks became the first pitcher in Major League history to win the Cy Young Award, undergo Tommy John surgery, and die from Lou Gehrig’s disease in a single season.

Following a loss on June 17th, Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillén delivered the third-longest (457 words) wholly unintelligible response to a reporter’s question in league history in which no words other than “shit,” “fuck,” or “damn” were clearly discernible.

Washington Nationals season-ticket holder Charles Biffle became just the second fan since 1962 to attend all 81 home games of a team which lost at least 100 games, committed at least 200 errors, was shut out at least 15 times and raised the price of beer by at least 20% and yet never once stood and shouted “You suck!” in the direction of the home dugout.

With an astonishing 2009 HOSE Aggregate of 14.68 billion [(season attendance) x (average ticket price) x (cost of a single beer) x (cable revenue) x (dollars extracted from neighboring building owners with rooftop bleachers) ÷ (dollars spent to upgrade your decrepit shitbox of a ballpark which your blindly loyal fans, all evidence to the contrary, declare a ‘national treasure’) – (number of disastrously inept free agents signed to multi-year contracts) – (number of actual world titles won in the past century)], the Chicago Cubs were once again statistically proven to be the most successful franchise in the history of professional sports.