Tag: web

New website: Baseball-Lingo.com

Over the weekend, I started up a new blog.  Itā€™s called Baseball-Lingo.com and itā€™s devoted to the jargon, slang and terminology of baseball. 

Iā€™ve seen a lot of baseball glossaries with lists of terms and short definitions on the web.  My vision is to delve more deeply into each entry, looking into the origins, usages, and history behind the words we use to describe the game we love.  You can read the About Page for more detail on what my mission for the website will be. 

Comments and suggestions are always welcome. 

Baseball Reference is goin’ mobile

A few weeks ago, I was out and about and had the need to look up some baseball stats.  I have Baseball Reference punched in as a bookmark on my Android smartphone.  I wouldnā€™t say perusing the site was painfulā€¦ I actually was able to find whatever stat I was looking for.  But quite honestly, it was laborious and I thought boy, Sean really needs a mobile version of this site or maybe even an app. 

Huzzah!! Baseball Reference now has gone mobile!

And it looks sharp, too.  I just gave it a quick test run and so far it passes my test. 

1) itā€™s easy to navigate especially considering how complicated this particular site is.

2) the text is clear as a bell as very easy to read

3)  and comprehensible.  Most everything you see on the regular website can be accessed via the mobile site. 

So bookmark http://m.bbref.com on your mobile device (you actually donā€™t have to.  Browsing to Baseball Reference’s normal web site with a mobile device will take you there). 

Thanks to Sean at Baseball Reference for going the extra step. 

Dawson, the HOF, and Wikipedia searches

Iā€™m always interested in searching habits of people browsing the web so I found this little tool interesting.  And if I can make it pertain to baseball, all the better.

dawson searches

The graph above shows the number of hits that Andre Dawsonā€™s page on Wikipedia took.  The results arenā€™t too surprising though Iā€™m surprised that the spike was so dramatic.  Essentially on the day of the announcement and the day after.  Not so much before the fact.  I attribute it to idea that hard core baseball fans (the ones that would be researching Dawson beforehand) arenā€™t so likely to use a source like Wikipedia for their research. 

For the occasional baseball fan, Wikipedia might be their first stop.

hof searches

For kicks, here is the Baseball Hall of Fameā€™s Wikipedia page spike graph.  Pretty much the same but less of a spike.  Obviously, the Hall of Fame was more on peopleā€™s mind as opposed to a particular player (since no one was announced yet). 

Searching for Baseball

At the end of each year, Google (as well as other search engines) does an analysis on what was searched on for that year.  Rising trends, falling trends, trends in all aspects of our society.  Google calls this trend analysis project ā€œZeitgeistā€ and they just released their results for 2009.

Looking at the fastest rising trends in the United States overall, weā€™re not going to find anything baseball related, sorry.  Actually, nothing sports related.  Twitter, Michael Jackson, and Facebook headed up the top ten of general keywords.  Among fastest FALLING was ā€œolympicsā€ but that makes sense as 2008 was naturally a big year for it and it was going to trend downward. 

What IS more relevant to our interests as baseball fans is search trends within the realm of sports.  Fortunately, Google does parse that out for us.  Here are some of the highest searched keywords within United States in sports.

Among baseball teams, there are no surprises.  Thereā€™s a reason for that East Coast bias:

  1. yankees
  2. red sox
  3. phillies
  4. cubs
  5. mets
  6. dodgers
  7. braves
  8. tigers
  9. cubs
  10. twins

Taking a look at all sports stadiums, three baseball parks make the list:

  1. yankee stadium
  2. cowboys stadium
  3. giants stadium
  4. gillette stadium
  5. lucas oil stadium
  6. reliant stadium
  7. dodger stadium
  8. raymond james stadium
  9. busch stadium
  10. shea stadium

The Yankeesā€™ ballpark gets the #1 nod for a couple reasons, Iā€™m sure.  One, their move to a new stadium.  Two, they won the World Series.  And three, well, theyā€™re the Yankees.

Interestingly, no baseball managers made the top 10 list of sports coaches.  Nor did any baseball rivalries.  Both of them were dominated by college, NBA and football.  

1.  red river rivalry (texas vs. oklahoma)

2. michigan ohio state rivalry

3. unc duke rivalry

4. colts patriots rivalry

5. vikings packers rivalry

6. bears packers rivalry

7. georgia florida rivalry

8. giants dodgers rivalry

9. lakers celtics rivalry

10. steelers browns rivalry

  1. coach k (mike krzyzewski – duke university basketball)
  2. mike tomlin (pittsburgh steelers)
  3. josh mcdaniels (denver broncos)
  4. john calipari (university of kentucky basketball)
  5. erik spoelstra (miami heat)
  6. sean miller (university of arizona basketball)
  7. bill belichick (new england patriots)
  8. roy williams (university of north carolina basketball)
  9. phil jackson (los angeles lakers)
  10. tom cable (oakland raiders)

 

Interesting that the Packers get searched on two different rivalries.

Thereā€™s more info at the Google Zeitgeist 2009 web site.