Take Ray Out to the Ball Game...
RAY: Here's the answer. Let's assume that they both had 600 at-bats.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: If Bluto batted .300 for the first half of the season and he had 500 at-bats during that first half of the season -
TOM: Oooh. Yeah.
RAY: He got 150 hits. One hundred fifty over 500 is .300 average, right?
TOM: Mmm-hmm. So he would have gotten 150.
RAY: Yeah. OK? 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.
TOM: So he's only been up 100 times in the second half of the season.
RAY: And he got 40 hits.
Popeye bats .375.
TOM: But he's up 500 times.
RAY: And he gets 187 and a half hits. One of them was a chuck-swing single over the infield. They only count that as half a hit. So now, let's...let's figure it all out.
Bluto batted 600 times. How many total hits did he get?
TOM: 190.
RAY: Right. How about Popeye? How many hits did he get?
TOM: 212 and a half.
RAY: And when you figure that out, Bluto batted .316 for the season. Even though he batted .300 and .400 in each half.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: And Popeye bats .353 and wins the batting title.
TOM: No kidding!
RAY: Pretty good, huh? So, who's our winner?
TOM: The winner is Mike Bennett from Dallas, Texas. Congratulations, Mike![ Car Talk Puzzler ]
