On Baseball-Few bits of baseball lore have eluded his Net (Great Baseball Stat Sites)

Sean Forman was working toward his doctorate in applied mathematics at the University of Iowa during the winter of 1999-2000. The subject matter was coming rather easily to him -- numbers always have - and his adviser had gone off to Italy.

On behalf of baseball fans and baseball writers everywhere, we say thank goodness for that.

"It's pretty cool to have been around that long," said Forman, a 34-year-old assistant professor of math and computer science at St. Joseph's University. "It's very gratifying that people like it and find it relevant."

It seems like just yesterday we were licking our fingertips and thumbing through the Baseball Encyclopedia to see what Puddin' Head Jones hit in 1951 (.285), or where the Phillies finished in 1936 (last), or who led the Athletics in wins their last season in Philadelphia (Arnie Portocarrero, nine).

Now, we just go to our favorite places, scroll down and click. If a statistic or piece of information exists, Forman's voluminous Web site will likely have it or provide a link to a resource that does.

"I can't tell you how often something like, 'I wonder what the Mets' attendance was in 1986' pops into my head for a column I'm writing and, bam, no matter where I am, I can find it out," said Mike Vaccaro, a columnist for the New York Post.

A baseball writer without Baseball-Reference.com is like a household without a can opener. You can survive without it, but it certainly is nice to have when you're in the mood for a tuna sandwich - or a World Series game goes 14 innings.

That's just what happened in October. As Game 3 of the 2005 World Series crept into the 14th inning, a Major League Baseball official announced to the press box that the game had matched the longest in World Series history - Game 2 of the 1916 Series between Boston and Brooklyn.

Armed with laptops and high-speed Internet, writers began clicking on Baseball-Reference.com, then on the section marked "Postseason."

"The site is unbelievable," said Howie Schwab, a former researcher who is now coordinating producer at ESPN. (He's also the take-on-all-comers expert on the network's trivia show, Stump the Schwab.) "The depth of it is amazing."

"We'll be watching a game, and someone will say, 'This guy is good, but not as good as Willie Stargell,' or 'Lou Brock never did that.' Well, let's look it up. Invariably we end up on Baseball-Reference.com.

"There's a lot of current statistical information out there, but this is a place you can find history and past performances."

At times, Kullman has used the site when preparing a salary arbitration case. That's not uncommon.

"I got an e-mail from one of [agent] Scott Boras' staffers once telling me they were looking up stuff on the site during a hearing," Forman said. "That was nice to hear."

People who work in and around baseball aren't the only ones who love the site. It was designed with fans in mind and, foremost, exists for them.

"I like to look up guys I remember watching as a kid and seeing if they were as good as I thought they were," said John Gump, 40, a lifelong fan from Kutztown and a frequent user of the site. (He logged on as he spoke.) "I remember seeing Roger Freed hit a home run when I was a kid, and for some reason it always stuck in my head that he was a power hitter. But when I look him up now I see he wasn't a power hitter. He only hit 22 in his career."

Traffic on the site is the best measure of its popularity. According to Forman, the site is visited by 30,000 to 40,000 users per day. On Jan. 10, the day Hall of Fame results were announced, there were 70,000 visitors.

If that's not enough to show you how much people like the site, dig up a copy of the July 2005 issue of GQ magazine. In a list of 75 reasons to love America, the magazine ranked the Web site No. 7, one behind "Pot delivery" and one ahead of "The wineries of the Pacific Northwest."

Want to know what college Tim and Todd Worrell attended? It's on B-R. Record-holders? They're there. How many major-leaguers were born in Montana? Yep. Want to have some fun and find out players who appeared in just one major league game? You can do that. If you're into degrees of separation, you can find a chain between Honus Wagner and Larry Bowa with a few key strokes.

Forman gets plenty of user feedback. Family of long-deceased major-leaguers have thanked him for keeping their relatives' memory alive. The site has been used to settle bets. One former player wasn't happy about having his salary listed. ("I think it had something to do with a divorce," Forman said.) A lawyer for a Hall of Famer once asked to have his client's page deleted. Forman pointed out that there was no law against presenting data, and the page is still there.

How did all this start? Forman grew up in Iowa, the son of a high school football coach, loving sports and numbers. Thankfully, he said, he was never introduced to Strat-O-Matic, because "I probably would never have gotten anything done." He liked Web design and once ran a site called the Iowa Farm Report, dedicated to minor-league prospects.

Forman always knew where to find historical baseball data on the Internet, but the information never appeared in one easy-to-use package. Like an air traffic controller, he rounded up the information and landed it in one place.

"It's really not a mathematical feat," he said. "It's more of a programming feat."

Forman is quick to credit sources for his data, like the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), Baseball1.com, and Retrosheet.org, another tremendous resource.

Forman spends 10 to 15 hours a week maintaining the site. It costs about $1,000 a month to run, but he's making some money - enough to pay for a 17-game Phillies ticket plan - particularly through sponsorships. For a fee - they start at $2 - you can pick any player in the history of the game and sponsor his page. (Sorry, new Phillies pitcher Ryan Franklin is already taken.)

As Baseball-Reference.com moves into its next year, Forman hopes to add features, like up-to-date daily stats and sortable stats, which would allow users to generate lists and comparisons. Additions like these might move his site up a few notches on GQ's list.

There are many reference Web sites dedicated to baseball. Besides Baseball-Reference.com, run by St. Joseph's math professor Sean Forman, here are a few others you might like:

Retrosheet.org. University of Delaware professor Dave Smith heads up an excellent resource that has collected thousands of box scores and game accounts from the 20th century.

Thebaseballcube.com.This site is a good source for minor-league and draft information.

Pitchers & catchers report in a week for spring training. These are some great sites to check out for stats, trivia, box scores, etc.

Batter up!

2 posted on 02/09/2006 3:32:50 PM PST by martin_fierro (I signed up in 1997 to post *this*?)

Traffic on the site is the best measure of its popularity. According to Forman, the site is visited by 30,000 to 40,000 users per day.

Something tells me the amount of traffic will increase with the posting of this thread.

I signed up in 1997 to post "this"?

I've been wondering the same thing about myself since July 7, 1998...

4 posted on 02/09/2006 3:37:36 PM PST by Fintan (One day we'll look back on this and plow into a parked car.)

5 posted on 02/09/2006 4:36:28 PM PST by ken5050 (Ann Coulter needs to have children ASAP to pass on her gene pool....any volunteers?)

6 posted on 02/09/2006 5:24:36 PM PST by Museum Twenty (Proudly supporting President George W. Bush - Proudly shouting "Rumsfeld '08!")

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On Baseball | Few bits of baseball lore have eluded his Net

By Jim Salisbury

Inquirer Columnist