One in a billion

As Oregon and Oregon State prep for NCAA Regional home baseball games, those are the literal odds of this amazing Beaver-Duck connection

Jake Keller left, and Dylan Keller find themselves in an extremely rare situation.

I WAS WATCHING an Oregon State-Long Beach State baseball at Goss Stadium in my hometown of Corvallis recently when I met a couple named Joe and Heather Keller of Redwood City, Calif. We were sitting next to each other on the top row above the visitors’ dugout.

“So, what brings you here?” I asked. “Are you OSU alums?”

“No,” said Joe. “We’re here because our son is a student manager for the Beavers.”

I found that interesting, but there was more.

“Our other son is a student manager for the Ducks.”

My eyebrows raised.

But, wait, there was even more.

“They’re twins.”

My head swiveled around like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist.

Dylan Keller, 22, is a manager for OSU; Jake, two minutes younger than his brother, is a manager for UO.

I have to believe that since 1859, when Amherst College played Williams College in the first collegiate baseball game, this has never happened. But just to make sure I wasn’t exaggerating the wonder of this, I consulted the most trusted source on the planet: ChatGPT, of artificial intelligence fame.

“It’s not just unusual — it’s statistically astonishing.” — Chat GPT

Its conclusion? The approximate odds of twin student baseball managers at rival schools are “one in 1.78 billion.”

“This is an extremely rare scenario — likely a one-in-a-billion kind of occurrence,” Chat told me. “If it has happened or is happening (e.g., with Oregon-Oregon State, etc.), it’s not just unusual — it’s statistically astonishing.”

And if you want to spike the odds higher, you could add another variable: the number of twin student managers at rival schools whose teams are each hosting NCAA Division I regional tournaments this weekend — 40 miles apart.

Ah, but here’s what makes the incredible even more incredibly incredible. At birth, Jake and Dylan almost didn’t survive to be alive to have the chance to even go to college — in a state, Oregon, that neither had been to until visits to see their respective schools five years ago.

“It does add another dimension to the odds, doesn’t it?” said their mother, Heather. “They were born more than three months early. Jake weighed 1 pound, 14 ounces and Dylan 2 pounds 1, ounce.

“We were told the chance of them surviving with no health issues was unlikely. So we were very lucky to have gotten through that with two strong, healthy boys.”