Fair Skies, Foul Balls: How Weather Influences Baseball

Should I have filed this under Primate Studies? Congrats to Mike on appearing in WaPo.

On a late July evening at Dodger Stadium last season, baseball’s best player stood near the visitors’ on-deck circle, preparing to face one of baseball’s best teams. After Mike Trout watched a Los Angeles Angels teammate take a strike to open the game, far above the field, the press box loudspeaker announced, “7:11 start; 83 degrees at game time.”

Trout, a three-time American League MVP, is also a weather geek. And he will tell you that in baseball, temperature isn’t the only meteorological factor that matters. There was, for example, no mention of the humidity, the gentle wind blowing out toward center field, or cotton candy clouds in the orange sunset sky.

These details are more than just trivia amid the piles of data surrounding modern baseball. Unlike attendance, day of the week or choice of uniform, weather affects the game to a degree unique to any major American sport.