As a kid, I always wanted to be 6′ 0″.

You’d read the back of baseball and football cards and see the listed heights and weights of players. Athletes were generally at least 6′ tall. I remember one day sorting all of my football cards on the floor in order of the height listed on the back of the card. My dad would tell me he was 5′ 8-1/2″ – which made him a half inch taller than Garo Yepremian (as listed on his 1972 football card). Dad was happy to know there was at least one football player smaller than he was. (A few years later, we learned Mack Herron was even shorter).

However, one day we got out the tape measure and dad was actually two inches shorter than claimed.

If you have been keeping up, the ABS system that will be used to define the strike zone for video reviews defines the strike zone more specifically than “…midpoint of a batter’s shoulders and the top of his pants to a point below the kneecap…” The top end of the strike zone is 53.5% of a player’s height; the bottom is 27% of a player’s height. Which, of course, means that systems need to know the actual height of these ballplayers.

And it seems that a lot of them fib about their height. Like, probably everyone who is a shade (or three shades) under 6′ 0″ but lists that height in the media guide. I wonder if future media guides will reflect actual heights rather than reported heights. (We will know this if we compare baseball cards with media guides and the number of 6′ 0″ players drops, say, 53.5%.)

In a related aside, I used to cover the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team a few decades back (shout out to Kevin Pritchard and Steve Woodberry). Just about everyone’s height in a college media guide is fudged.

Oh, I never made it to 6′ 0″. I got to 5′ 10″, but I used to say 5′ 10-1/2″. I was, however, the same height that childhood hero Walter Payton was listed at. And I met Walter Payton.

I was taller than Mr. Payton.