What is the minimum number of umpires needed to start a game?

I've never seen it, perhaps because I'm wrong, but is it one?

You're correct A_C. Care to come up with a question?

Sure,

On September 4, 1908 Detroit's Germany Schaefer did something in a game, for the final time, that was outlawed by the rules committee on the basis that it "made a mockery of the game". The action that Schaefer did is something that you'll see in most major league games, but there was something different about his interpretation of the rule. What did he do?

Did he run the bases in the opposite direction?

That's pretty much it. He tried to steal first base whilst on second, apparently he did it to put the pitcher off.

If anyone gets even close to this with a guess I'll be impressed, how many plays are possible in a baseball game? They had this fact on a Mets game a few weeks back, I've no idea how they worked it out or what the criteria exactly is.

do you mean how many plays are possible in a single at bat? As in single, double, triple, homer, sac fly, ground out, fly out, fielders choice, infield fly etc? Or adding up the possibly plays of each at bat over the course of a 9 inning game?

I'm not exactly sure, but they have this thing on the Mets broadcast called the Twisted fact and it said "Each baseball game has <number> possible plays." I presume it means that there are X amount of variables that can happen within an entire game.

I have no idea what the answer is

Don;t know whether to say something like 10 or 100

so I'll say 45 but I literally have no idea

Close, the answer is 12,386,344!
I'm still not sure how they worked it out. I tried googling it, but could only find the stat not how it was compiled.

I have no idea how that can possibly be.

Well were do we start?

A ground out and fly out to every possible position accounts for 18, a single, double and triple to each adds another 27.

Anyone care to continue to add plays on? :D

Presumably stuff like SS on third, 2B on first and the Catcher hitting a fly ball to a RF with the SS tagging up counts as one individual play- and there must be a numerous variations of this.

I was so close lol

Never would of guessed that number, like you say there is so many combinations of the same thing, Like lottery numbers where you can have millions of potentials outcomes just from 6 balls.