You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
0-40
The Shanghai Dragons, a team competing in the inaugural season of the Overwatch League (Overwatch being a popular first-person shooter game), finished 0-40 — “one of the shittiest seasons in the history of professional sports.” Eat your heart out, 2008 Detroit Lions. [Kotaku]
11:32 a.m.
It was at that moment yesterday morning that an earthquake was detected in Mexico City. It was caused not by geological faults but by the foot of one man. Hirving “Chucky” Lozano scored in the World Cup for Mexico against world No. 1 Germany, setting off seismically measurable celebrations complete with “mass jumping” in Mexico’s capital city. The game ended 1-0. [Goal.com]
29 years
Brooks Koepka, a pro golfer from Florida, won his second consecutive U.S. Open yesterday with a one-over-par total at Shinnecock Hills in New York. No golfer has won two Opens — the most democratic golf tournament in the world — in a row since Curtis Strange did the deed in 1988 and ’89. [muted clapping] [ESPN]
53.9 percent of the vote
Iván Duque was elected president of Colombia with nearly 54 percent of the vote. Duque, a conservative who opposes a peace deal with the leftist rebels known as FARC, defeated Bogotá’s former mayor, Gustavo Petro, who supported the peace process. A deal signed in 2016 formally ended 52 years of civil war that killed over 200,000 people. [The Guardian]
1,000 Walmarts
There are over 5,000 Walmart locations in the U.S. One man has been arrested and is suspected of defrauding more than 1,000 of them over 18 months. Thomas Frudaker, 23, was arrested in Yuma, Arizona, after Walmart employees alerted police to a suspicious transaction. He’s suspected of “purchasing items, stealing parts, then returning them.” [Arizona Republic]
27,328 people per game
Nearly halfway through the season, Major League Baseball attendance sits at an average of just over 27,000 a game, down 6.6 percent from this time last year. The sport hasn’t seen a drop like this since the season following the 1994 player strike. One reason might be the weather: rain and unseasonably cold temperatures. Another might be competitive balance. Six teams currently claim winning percentages below .400, the same number that claimed them between 2014 and 2017 combined. [The Wall Street Journal]
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