Cambridge - Six of the world brightest men and women convened for several sessions in mid-July to solve the age-old befuddling enigma that is the infield fly rule of baseball.The rule, like the Gordian knot, has been one of baseball intractable problems, baffling sports enthusiasts and wives for ages.
"We've used everything," said John Gyrus, MIT professor emeritus of sports horticulture, "from computer-generated scenario models to virtual simulations to the Pythagorean Theorem and some long division. There were many late nights with Sam Adams and the Wii."
The august group, which included a macroeconomist, a neuroscientist, a Fields Metal mathematics professor, a public choice theorist, and a Hotel and Restaurant Management major, were able to reverse engineer the rule and put it back together again successfully.
While we think we may have solved its underlying mechanism," says Penny Parietal, the panel's chair, "We have a long way to go into finding out how it got there in the first place."
