What are the odds?

This is a question I often ask in the face of an unusual event.

At the age of 75, Ron “The Penguin” Cey has found a second act, including a podcast and new book, Penguin Power: Dodger Blue, Hollywood Lights, and a One-in-a-Million Big League Journey.

Now you know how I feel about “superlative” titles, but it did make me wonder: given the numbers, what are the odds that someone will make it to the majors?

My Google searches resulted in answers where you had to meet them halfway: You had to be some kind of athlete to begin with. So according to media.hometeamsonline.com

Less than eleven in 100, or about 10.5 percent, of NCAA senior male baseball players will get drafted by a Major League Baseball (MLB) team. Approximately one in 200, or approximately 0.5 percent of high school senior boys playing interscholastic baseball will eventually be drafted by an MLB team.

Cey attended Washington State University, an NCAA Division I school. He had also been drafted as a high schooler.

Let’s take it a step further. According to Spreadsheetsolving.com,

So we get about 278k Little Leaguers per year. The meaty part of the Major League Baseball age curve is 24-30, which gives about 82 per year from the US. We take this and divide by the total, which gives us a 0.0296% chance, which is about 1 in 3,376.

As I’m no mathematician, I cannot answer to the accuracy of these numbers, but 1 in 3,376 is not 1 in a million (0.0001%).

A more detailed report comes from Casino.org. I won’t go into the details, so you’re on your own here. Bottom line, it’s still not a million to one. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything that gives the odds for the average American male, which of course doesn’t take into consideration different genders or people from other countries.

Tagged as: Ron Cey