A seemingly intrinsic part of the game of baseball is the keeping of statistics on the achievements of the players. Started by Henry Chadwick in the 19th century who devised the concept of batting average based on his experience of cricket. Commonly used statistics are explained here:
... equation
<math>ax^2+bx+c=0</math>
in terms of the coefficients a, b and c, which are assumed to be real (but see below for generalizations) with a being ...