I once made the comment that I think there are truly only about 200 people in the world. They just move around a lot. It seems that if you take about 10 minutes to start a discussion, or do some research, you find links that seem to defy odds, which can only be explained by my theory.

A comic I know has a theory that if you go back far enough, everybody is from Brooklyn. These two thoughts give us a springboard for this week’s column.

While with my son’s baseball team in Jasper over the weekend, I came across the Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame. It is located at Vincennes University. One of the inductees is Gil Hodges. Gil happened to manage my wife Darlene’s all-time favorite baseball team, the 1969 New York Mets. He has a small bridge named after him in Brooklyn. He has a small bridge named after him in Indiana.

There is a Little League field named after him in Brooklyn. The high school field in Princeton, Indiana, is a named after him. He married an Italian-American from Brooklyn and settled in New York. I married an Italian-American and settled in Indiana (I don’t have a bridge named after me, but I do live at Covered Bridge. I feel like Gil and I are long-lost brothers).

The real point of this column is that while Indiana and Kentucky are historically known as basketball regions (with Louisville also getting national acclaim for horse racing), both have enormous and significant baseball histories as well.

In the Indiana Hall of fame, there are two no-hitters from Carl Erskine, Hodges’ Dodger teammate who still lives in Indiana, and Don Larsen. He pitched the only World Series no-hitter in 1956 — a perfect game. Also included is former commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis and Tommy John, a guy who successfully overcame an elbow injury through groundbreaking surgery that now bears his name. John is the winningest pitcher in Indiana history with 288 victories.

An online search lists more than 100 Hoosier natives as current or former big leaguers, including Jasper’s Scott Rolen, a member of the world champion St. Louis Cardinals, and Vincennes’ Clint Barmes, playing for the Colorado Rockies.

In Louisville, the tradition is perhaps even richer.

Many of you probably know that Louisville was one of the original Major League cities. The Louisville Colonels played in the 1890 World Series, which ended in a 3-3 tie with the Brooklyn Bridegrooms. There is a healthy debate about whether any players in that World Series used bats made by J.F. Hillerich’s woodworking shop. Legend has it that Hillerich’s son Bud made a bat for Pete Browning, a star on the Colonels major league team. Another story historians debate is whether the first bat was actually requested by a St. Louis Browns player who broke his bat in Louisville and was unable to find another. He stopped in the Hillerich woodshop and supposedly had one made. Regardless, it wasn’t long before the first bat, known as a Falls City Slugger, would evolve into the Louisville Slugger and become a household name with baseball fans everywhere.

Today, there are of course a number of Louisville natives in the big leagues, including Cleveland pitcher Paul Byrd and Houston’s Chris Burke, both of whom have been to postseason play. Burke, like Rolen, played in the World Series. Big league umpire Paul Nauert is a Louisville native as well.

Both sides of the river are represented in the Baseball Hall of Fame. New Albany High School produced Billy Herman, the great Chicago Cub second baseman who was inducted at Cooperstown in 1975. Louisville’s Pee Wee Reese was a standout shortstop for the Dodgers and inducted in 1984. In 1952, Reese became the only National League player in the 20th Century to safely reach base three times in the same inning.

With Major League Baseball recently celebrating the anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, it is wise to remember that Pee Wee Reese was a big part of that entire world-changing chapter in American history.

At Reese’s funeral, Joe Black, another baseball pioneer, said: “Pee Wee helped make my boyhood dream come true to play in the Majors, the World Series. When Pee Wee reached out to Jackie, all of us in the Negro League smiled and said it was the first time that a white guy had accepted us. When I finally got up to Brooklyn, I went to Pee Wee and said, ‘Black people love you. When you touched Jackie, you touched all of us.’ With Pee Wee, it was No. 1 on his uniform and No. 1 in our hearts.”

There is a wonderful statue of Reese in front of Slugger Field, which is the home park for the Louisville Bats.

Between that extraordinary facility and the University of Louisville opening a beautiful new stadium for their team, there is plenty of outstanding and affordable baseball to be seen.

With plenty of fun baseball at the youth level — including the impressive setup at Jeffersonville’s Meijer Fields complex — and a growing softball contingent (check out UofL’s team some weekend, it’s free to attend and a great venue to watch that fast-paced game), there is plenty to do around here between Derby and the start of football.

So play ball, and appreciate the great history of the national pastime and Kentuckiana. Can of corn.

Bob Valvano lives in Sellersburg and can be reached via e-mail at bobvshow@yahoo.com. He is a former college basketball coach and current radio show host on ESPN Radio.