Lesson Plans: A Look at the
History of Baseball through Mathematical Eyes
Kathleen McCann
Cristo Rey Jesuit High School
Chicago, IL 60608
Unit Overview
The introduction to this unit will be the overview of the Library of Congress website and the American Memory collection.
The students will then examine the baseball collections. Each student will answer questions analyzing the sites that they are searching through and examine the pictures from each site. We will then examine the baseball card collections from the older cards and from more recent collections.
Students will choose several older players and a modern player and compare what statistics are included on their cards. They will use the cards shown on the LOC collection and a baseball reference site called www.baseball-reference.com
They will be required to compare the statistics from the modern players with the players from the cards they have studied from the LOC collection.
The students will prepare a PowerPoint presentation with downloaded images and properly cited cards from the Baseball card collection. In this presentation, they will present the data and comparisons they have made from the statistical analysis.
Materials needed
Prerequisite Student Skills: Basic math skills
Lesson I
Students will be introduced to the Library of Congress Website and the American Memory collection. Teachers should explain the types of collections contained in the site and help students to make general searches. Students will then be asked to search for the 'Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights 1860s-1960s Collection' and the 'Baseball Cards 1887-1914 Collection.' The students will be asked to search for various pictures in the site, including the baseball watchers on the pole picture contained on the homepage for this website. Using these sites, they should answer the questions on the History of Baseball Activity sheet posted at the end of this page.
Lesson 2
The students will be asked to take the three names that they selected from the baseball card collection and to research those players' statistics. Using that information they will compare those statistics with the statistics of their favorite player from the last ten years. Using a baseball website called www.baseball-reference.com the students will put the names of the players they selected into a search for the statistics for each player.
Lesson 3
They will prepare a PowerPoint presentation using the baseball cards they have chosen and the statistics they have compared. They will properly cite the images they include in their presentations, and they will present pie charts and bar graphs comparing the statistical data they have compared.
Lesson 4
Students will present their presentations to the class and share those statistics with their classmates. As a group we will discuss what they have learned about baseball and what has changed in the past 150 years of the sport.
Assessment/Evaluation:
Student work will be evaluated the following ways:
Follow-up Activities
Following this unit, the students will be encouraged to integrate the
Library of Congress website with their work in history and math classes.
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The History of Baseball Activity
Name: __________________
Date: ___________________
1. Who was Jackie Robinson?
2. Why was he famous?
3. What do you think of his life story?
4. Using the American Memory website, please review the old baseball cards. Please list three ways that the cards were different then than they are now. Please explain your answers.
5. Choose three players from those old cards and list their names below.
6. Choose one current baseball player.
7. Using the names from the baseball cards you found on the American Memory site, please look up those players on the www.baseball-reference.com website and compare their statistics (number of games played, runs batted in, etc) with a current player on the Professional Baseball team of your choice. Explain what you found in the space below.
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