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Sean Forman Speaks

by Geoff Young on February 8th, 2007

Sabernomics points us to a cool interview of Sean Forman, the driving force behind Baseball-Reference.com. John Donovan at SI.com gets Sean to talk a little about his brainchild, which has become an indispensable resource to baseball fans and analysts everywhere. There’s tons of good stuff in this interview, but one thing that struck me was the attention to detail required to make something like B-R.com a reality:

There’s always new stuff. SABR produces a biographical newsletter that has about five or six pages of corrections — some player from 1902 was found to actually have had a first name of Wilhelm, rather than Wilbur. I try to keep those updated. There’s always some maintenance going on.

Think about that for a second. We’re talking about a guy who played the game 105 years ago.

Sean’s work space sounds like a dream to me:

One entire side of the wall is nothing but bookcases. It’s mostly baseball books, from floor to ceiling, and a lot of computer books, and some business books as well. I have a complete run of Sporting News Baseball Guides, from 1946 to 2006. A fairly complete run of Baseball Registers as well. I have probably 12 baseball encyclopedias of different vintage and different flavor … just a lot of reference materials that I refer to when somebody writes in and says you have an error on this page.

That just rocks. Anyway, it’s nice to see Sean’s efforts being recognized and also rewarded. The service he is providing the baseball community cannot be quantified (ironic, eh?).

Read the full interview, swing by B-R.com, and maybe say a word of thanks to the man behind it. Job well done!

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POSTED IN: Personalities, Stats and Analysis