"Baseball Statistics"?

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Many times, when one reads a definition of autism or Asperger's syndrome, one may come across the section of "intense interest in one particular area"... and a lot of the times, "baseball statistics" is given as an example...

I've met many Aspies already, as well as autistic people without AS, and none of them seem to be interested in baseball statistics...

Do any of you know if it is a fairly common interest among autistic people, or is it just an example that has "caught on" over the past few years? Am I over-thinking this?

Just curious.

My guess is that it caught on because so many NT men are interested in sports. The "baseball statistics" example makes for a tidy and easy to understand comparison between NT and AS ways of approaching the same subject.

I think it is just as example. It is probably dated as well--the only guy I know that memorizes them is actually rather old.

It's a stupid example.

I have a friend with AS who lives in Ohio. He loves sports and is obsessed with baseball. He memorizes scores of the games and remembers every single date he has gone to one since 1987. He also collects movies that are about baseball. I got him A League of Their Own last December. He loves baseball and I got to share my obsession with him. Luckily he doesn't mind seeing women play

A parent of a child with autism was talking about how he had memorised all the numbers on the lamp-posts. Then I realised (which I never had before) that I knew a lot of the numbers on lamp-posts, telegraph poles and street-lights. My family have never noticed that utility structures have numbers. In Singapore they number all the pedestrian bridges, walkways and rubbish bins so that "concerned citizens" can report litter or broken lights.

A lot of people with ASD seem uninterested in sport, especially team sport, and I think there are better examples than baseball statistics. Also, it is not always numerical. Some people like collecting facts, or words, or colours.

Very much when I was younger, not as much anymore.

When I was probably 9, my dad told my grandpa I was into baseball trivia. He asked me who "The Big Train" was. And I told him Walter Johnson. He looked genuinely shocked that I knew of early 20th century players. And it was all on my own that I learned the facts and numbers, from books etc (pre-internet). Also into cards, the ratio of sand grains at Venice Beach to baseball cards that I owned was about 1/1, it was ridiculous.

Still a baseball fan, not so locked onto stats anymore, try not to obsess over useless, lifeless things now that I'm aware. And the thing that was a little weird about it was that I wasnt really interested in playing the game, and really didnt watch actual games much until I was older. Probably pretty typical with interests here, I guess.

I wonder sometimes whether my interest in sports was born from trying to fit in with peers.