Baseball: Numbers are against Compton Centennial’s Chris Smith

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Oh no, I’m gonna bust out the calculator. That’s not a good thing -- I stink so much at basic math that I couldn’t figure out a waiter’s tip even with an IBM super-computer. Even so, let me give this a shot.

Yesterday, the mathematical odds were sneering in the face of Compton Centennial’s Chris Smith, who entered a game versus Torrance as the nation’s leading hitter with a. 725 average. Let’s compute some possibilities...

If Smith got three hits in five at-bats, that’s a .600 average and his average would’ve dropped. How about two for three? That’s .667 and still his average would’ve inched down.

What did Smith end up with? He got four singles in four at-bats in the 15-5 loss. His average went up to .745 -- that’s 41 hits in 55 at-bats -- just unbelievable. And more unbelievably, Smith, who has committed to USC, wasn’t pleased. ‘I went four for four but I didn’t like those four hits,’ he said. ‘A couple were ground balls and there was that blooper.’

Sounds like a perfectionist to me.

On one final note, I can use a calculator -- yay!

-- Anthony Stitt

-- Image from www.istockphoto.com