Sean Forman launched Baseball-Reference.com in 2000.
Photo courtesy Sean Forman
Who’s sponsoring whom
- Ryan Braun ($60), who finished third in the National League MVP voting, is brought to you by the Fantasy Baseball Sherpa.
- Ian Kinsler’s page was about to become available again.
- Scott Feldman, a pitcher for the Texas Rangers — BaseballTalmud.com, which also sponsors the pages for several other Jews
- Ron Blomberg, the Majors’ first designated hitter — Jewsinbaseball.blogspot.com
- Ken Holtzman, the winningest Jewish pitcher — a doctor in Chicago
- Art Shamsky — Stocksandnews.com
- Former Met Shawn Green — Sym Dynasty, a simulated baseball game
- New Jersey’s own Moe Berg — an eBay merchant
- Buddy Myer, the all-time Jewish hits leader — a marketing consultant in Reading, Pa.
For more information, visit Baseball-Reference.com.
December 4, 2008
If you’re looking for a unique way to support your favorite Jewish baseball player, why not sign up to sponsor his “page” at Baseball-Reference.com, one of the most popular websites on the national pastime.
For as little as $5 a year, you can be affiliated with such legends as Sandy Koufax or prospects like San Francisco Giants rookie Brian Horwitz, aka “The Rabbi of Swat.”
“We get over a half million page views a day,” said Sean Forman, who launched Baseball-Reference.com in 2000. “The site attracts fans, serious researchers, members of the media, and a few seemingly unlikely interested parties.
“There are a lot of agents and front-office personnel who use the site,” he said. “If they want to look up a minor league player and get their statistics, it’s a lot easier to find it on our site than for them to get it” through their own research.
Fantasy baseball fanciers also find the site valuable. “We’ve done surveys in the past, and I think well over 50 percent of our audience plays fantasy or historical simulation or things like that. Our goal is to be the one place you go when you want to look up statistical information.”
Forman said the page sponsorships are based on the previous four months of traffic and extrapolated over the next year; the rate is based on a fee of $1.50 per 1,000 page views. Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth have had the most visits — about 2.5 and 1.93 million, respectively, as of press time — so they rate the biggest bucks, around $400 to $500.
Koufax leads all Jewish Major Leaguers with more than 700,000 hits. His page is currently sponsored by a sports memorabilia firm for $115. Jeffrey Lichtman, a Manhattan attorney, spent $45 to host slugger Hank Greenberg’s page, which has been visited more than 288,000 times. Current superstar Kevin Youkilis recently fetched $100 by FenwayFanatics.com. But up-and-coming players like Horwitz and Arizona Diamondbacks’ Josh Whitesell are still up for grabs for $10 and $15, respectively.
Forman has created sites for football, basketball, and hockey in recent years, so players like Benny (and Lennie) Friedman in the NFL or the NHL’s Mathieu Schneider are also looking for sponsors.
In an e-mail to NJJN, Lichtman explained why he wanted Greenberg’s page:
“I suppose very simply I’m a Greenberg fan (Koufax as well). As a young Jewish kid growing up, there were simply no Jewish athletes to look up to. When I learned of the existence of Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg I was over the moon, as you can imagine. Since that time they’ve been my two biggest baseball heroes as they embody the existence of the Jewish warrior — which I was unaware even existed as a kid.”
Lichtman, who described himself as “a particularly aggressive criminal defense attorney,” said he might not have had the confidence to pursue that career if not for the examples of the ballplayers.
Lichtman dedicated the page to his young children, Jackson and Grant, “so that they will one day learn that they can be anything they wish and nothing will ever hold them back.”
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