Sep 26, 2020
RAY: There are two rookie baseball players, Bluto and Popeye, who started the season on opening day and made a wager as to which one would have the best batting average at the end of the season.
Well, the last day of the season arrives, and not much is going to change--especially considering that neither one of them is in the starting lineup.
Bluto says, "Hey, Popeye, what did you bat for the first half of the year?" Popeye answers, "I batted .250." And Bluto responds, "Well, I got you there. I batted .300. How about after the All-Star break?" Proudly, Popeye pipes up, "I batted .375."
Bluto says, "Pretty good, but I batted .400. Fork over the 20 bucks that we bet."
The bat boy, Dougie, saunters over and says, "Don't pay the 20 bucks, Popeye. I think you won."
The question is this: How could Popeye have won?
RAY: Let's assume that they both had 600 at-bats. If Bluto batted .300 for the first half of the season and he had 500 at-bats during that first half of the season, he got 150 hits. One hundred fifty over 500 is .300 average, right?
Now, If Popeye batted .250 and had 100 at-bats, he would have had 25 for 100.
The second half of the season, Bluto bats .400. How does he do that? Well, we know he had 500 at-bats in the first half, so he's only been up 100 times in the second half of the season, and he got 40 hits. Popeye bats .375, but he's up 500 times. He gets 187 and a half hits.
So now, let's figure it all out. Bluto batted 600 times and got 190 hits. Popeye got 212 and a half. And when you figure that out, Bluto batted .316 for the season. Popeye bats .353 and wins the batting title.
