By Joe Granese
October 11, 2006

One run, two hits, no errors

Three great sites offer everything from odd stats to breaking baseball news

The 2006 baseball season has run its course, finding the Phillies out of the playoffs for another year. Still, I am not at all displeased with their performance, since they remained in the race until the next-to-last day of the season. Sometimes the box scores were the only thing that got me out of bed in the morning.

While I am looking forward to a better outcome next season, I am deeply interested in this year’s playoffs, which have been under way since last week. Starting out with a five-game divisional series before moving to the seven-game league championship series, two teams will be left to contest the World Series starting Oct. 21.

There are plenty of former baseball fans out there who are sick of a sport played by whiny, overpaid players more concerned with CBAs than RBIs. From conversations I have enjoyed both online and in real time, baseball fans know that Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame. Many are tired of hearing about performance-enhancing drugs, and they still hold allegiance to their home team, and to their favorite sport.

If you look at the attendance figures, baseball still qualifies as our national pastime, at least as far as team sports go. According to USA Today, 74,926,174 people attended Major League Baseball games in 2005. AP reports that just 21,892,096 seats were filled in National Football League contests.

We managed to keep away from the stats until the fourth paragraph, but there is still no denying that baseball is a game of numbers. Now, with the best part of the season in full swing, here is a great chance for you to amaze your friends with your all-encompassing knowledge of baseball statistics. Just have a look at some of these sites before watching a game and you should have everything you need to match numbers with even the most absorbed sports geek.

 www.vitalstatistics.info

           This is the site where I pulled up those attendance figures. It took about two clicks. It is always nice to find an effective new resource, and the “amazing compendium of factoids, minutiae, and random bits of wisdom” that is the Vital Statistics site has earned a place among my bookmarks.

This site represents amazing data collection at work. While clicking around the section entitled “Baseball Ineptitude” I found stats from the St. Petersburg Times reminding me that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays were the first team to lose 100 games and still enjoy a winning home record. I am sure that they were welcome visitors everywhere else in the league.

I found the record of the Philadelphia Phillies in their first season while surfing. The Phightins managed a 17-82 mark in 1883. No surprise there. Other odd statistics include Warren Spahn’s odd record of 363 pitching victories and 363 base hits, and the equally strange outcome of Vinny Castilla’s 1996 and 1997 seasons, with identical totals in average, home runs, and RBI.

Amazingly, the Vital Statistics website is not limited to sporting numbers. You can find out the odds against being dealt a royal flush in poker (649,739 to 1) or bemoan the sad fate of the 1,500 Tibetans who are eaten by bears every year. If you are looking for a statistic, this is good place to find it. For keeping me from my work for more than two hours of contented surfing, www.vitalstatistics.info researches five statistical spiders.

 www.baseball-almanac.com

 I love baseball statistics. Even as we’re being drawn into a winter of football and hockey, a day rarely passes in the life of a baseball fan without a reason to look up something baseball related. One day, when I was explaining that Jimmy “The Beast” Foxx had actually finished his career pitching for the Phillies, I stumbled across the Baseball Almanac online.

That was a long day of lookups to say the least. It reminded me of the day my parents presented me with my first copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia. I spent hours leafing or clicking through my new resource with little regard for any but the most urgent interruptions.

Getting back to the attendance stats, I learned that the New York Yankees led the American League in attendance in 2005 with 4,090,440 paid admissions. They were followed by Anaheim, Boston and Seattle. In the Senior Circuit, 3,603,690 was the record, set by the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Cardinals ran second, with the Giants in third. Unlucky on the field, the Chicago Cubs held down fourth place with 3,100,262 paid admissions. Why bother winning when you can sell three million tickets without regard to performance?

I was especially entertained with the site’s exhaustive library of information regarding team uniforms. Here, you can find out exactly what your favorite team was wearing during any particular season. Some of them are pretty flashy, like those snappy Boston Bees of 1936. Do not start looking unless you have several hours to burn.

The best information on the Baseball Almanac site, of course, is the complete database of individual player statistics. If you have ever wondered where the TV announcers pull up those odd stats, you can bet that there is at least one laptop in the press box surfing here. For bringing the information together, www.baseball-almanac.com goes 5-for-5 in spiders.

 www.mlb.com

           While I normally get my baseball results at Yahoo!, the official Major League Baseball website is always a favorite stop during the playoffs. I was especially happy to see Phillies’ first baseman Ryan Howard’s smiling face on the home page; he is being honored as the National League leader in RBIs and home runs. Could there be an MVP award in his future? This is the site to check.

Generally, the Major League Baseball site gains access to breaking news first. Usually, the site posts it first, too, so check the hottest rumors here first before relying on hearsay. Maybe if everyone had been checking MLB.com, rainout information would have been more evenly distributed during the divisional series.

The site offers video highlights of prior playoff action, affording me extra opportunities to laugh at J.D. Drew’s boneheaded base-running blunder. Drew now owns the honor of being the first man in playoff history to become the second out on a single play at the plate. I also enjoyed FastCast replays of the A’s inside-the-park home run and former Phillie Nick Punto’s skywalking snare of a pop foul.

During the off-season, the mlb.com website is an ideal resource for the pining baseball fan. You can follow the hot stove league transactions and see who is doing what during winter ball. Updates on players recovering from injuries and the latest news on various scandals are never more than a few clicks away. For bringing the national pastime to the nation and the world, www.mlb.com scores five spiders.

I hope these informative websites enhance your enjoyment of the 2006 Major League Baseball postseason. Even more so, I hope we will be sitting right here next year discussing the Phillies’ chances against the Red Sox in the 2007 World Series. If you have any baseball-related websites to share, as always, touch me up at granese(at)juno.com.