American Scientist

Craig Robinson did not become a baseball fan as a boy listening to Yankees games on the radio late at night; he became a fan as a thirty-something Englishman living in Germany, watching Yankees games late at night on MLB.com. His fascination with baseball tends to the quantitative and the quirky. He asks: If all the stolen bases in the 2008 season had actually been stolen, how much would it have cost to replace them? ($248,102.43.) Or, if the Yankees continue the practice of retiring the numbers of distinguished players, how soon will they run out of one- and two-digit numbers? (2100.)

In Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure (Bloomsbury, $25), Robinson presents his view of the game through paintings, photographs, essays and creative statistical graphics. Above is his analysis of the correlation between player payrolls and World Series victory.