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Yesterday, in Edmonton, at a baseball game two of my friends caught a home run, in separate plays during the game, and I am wondering where to begin in analyzing what the probability of this happening was? They were sitting beside each other. This happened at the Telus Field which has a capacity of 10, 000. The field dimensions: Left: 340 ft (100 m) Centre: 420 ft (130 m) Right: 320 ft (98 m)

Unfortunately, I don't think these dimensions include the seating area (I found these dimensions on wikipedia). How can I approach this problem?

To constrict the problem a little, I try to define the possible landing areas of the ball as squares with sides, roughly the diameter of the ball, which fill the area of shape representing the total possible landing positions. This shape would extend out from the batter's position following the foul lines into the stands, the distance between the lines increasing as you travel further from the batter. I am not including the area outside of the foul lines, and the grid of squares representing the possible positions would extend into the far reaches of the stands. I am assuming that the baseball is 3inches in diameter. Probabilistically, would I need to know which area of squares is landed on most frequently? And would I need to know their exact seating positions?

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    So if you model it as non-uniform with distribution dependent on lefthanded or righthanded then you may want to say where the two seats were located.2012-06-16

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This is very complicated. Obviously we know it is unlikely from observing baseball games. For example I have gone to many games and rarely had a ball come close enough to my seat that I could reach for it. So even to get 1 ball in a game is rare and this is almost like getting 2. But where a baseball will get hit is very complicated. It depends on whether the batter is a right or left handed hitter, the pitcher and the type of pitch and other things. To answer this with a probability estimate would require modeling the process for individual picthes and then to look at all the pitches thrown in the game, proably more than 200 pitches. It is even rarer than what I am saying because I am think of balls hit in fair or foul territory and you are restricting it to home runs which only accounts for about 1/4th of the seats.

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    Then you should be able to get an estimate that this outcome would occur.2012-06-16