Frank: How former math professor Sean Forman created an information center for the sports world
From Noah Frank at WTOP on March 1, 2018, with mention of SABR members Sean Forman, Sean Lahman, and Hans Van Slooten:
“Bull Durham” leading lady Annie Savoy may have found her religious salvation in the Church of Baseball but statistician Sean Forman found his baseball deliverance at Summit Presbyterian.
It’s his church, the one he and his family attend, just a few blocks from their home. He used to only be here on Sundays, back when he was a math professor at St. Joseph’s University, when the piles of Excel spreadsheets he would update at the end of each baseball season represented just a hobby, not the nerve center of sports information for fans and professionals alike.
The passion was born out of boredom and idle hands back in the spring of 2000 when Forman’s wife, who finished her graduate program at the University of Iowa a year ahead of him, landed a job at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
“I was in Macon and kind of bored out of my mind. My adviser was in Italy, and I didn’t have any teaching or anything, so I created Baseball Reference kind of that year when I was at loose ends in Georgia,” Forman told WTOP in an interview in his office.
Read the full article here: https://wtop.com/mlb/2018/03/math-professor-created-information-center-sports-world/
Originally published: March 1, 2018. Last Updated: March 1, 2018.