Appreciating Baseball-Reference

I don't think I'm shocking anyone when I say that Baseball-Reference.com is one of the best sites on the internet (for us baseball fans, at least) and one that I use all the time. Sean Forman's site is loaded with about as much information as you could possibly ask for, and it's all free. Basically, this is what the internet is designed for, and I feel awfully thankful that it exists. And with the news last week of his new partnership, it's obvious that the site is working rather successfully. I couldn't be happier.

One of the neat little aspects of BR is the sponsorship option: pretty much any page on the site (players, teams, colleges, etc) can be sponsored by an individual or website. For the big names like Barry Bonds or Cal Ripken, Jr., you're probably just going to see big websites sponsoring those pages since they cost more money. But for less popular players, from Duke Snider down to Jim Eisenreich and even lower (*cough*Eddie Zosky*cough*), you have a pretty good chance of putting your name on their page and giving a brief shout-out. It's a great little feature for fans, especially if you have a fascination or personal connection with a less popular player.

After thinking about this recently, I decided that it might be a fun idea to sponsor a couple of pages myself. I don't expect to draw much, if any, traffic from these sponsorships, but it seemed like something I should do anyway. I'd be showing my support for some players/teams that have some meaning to me, and I'd be supporting a great website at the same time. And with the majority of pages costing $10 or less, it didn't seem like a big hit to the pocket book. So I took the plunge earlier this week, and now the pages I've sponsored are live! A list of the three pages that I sponsored, and a brief reason for why I chose each page, is below. Take a look, and let me know if you've sponsored any pages yourself (and why).

• 2006 Milwaukee Brewers - This team has some great memories for me. They may not have been the best Brewers team of recent years, but I'll remember them for a long time You can read why here (see #21).
• Cal Poly State University - This is my alma mater, and I'm proud to be an alum alongside such baseball luminaries as Mike Krukow, Thornton Lee, Garrett Olson, and, of course, Ozzie Smith. John Madden and Weird Al Yankovic are also fellow alums. Good company! I touched on some university stuff back in December.
• Fernando Valenzuela - Fernando was at his best in the early 1980s, and that was just a little bit before my time. But coming from a Los Angeles household from that time period, Fernando definitely had a positive impact. I've said before that Cal Ripken was my favorite player growing up, but there's no way I'd ever be able to sponsor his page. Fernando was the best I could do, and I'm quite happy with that. As it turns out, I wrote about Fernando earlier as well.