How did This Great Game get started?
Why do you subtitle the site "The Book of Baseball on the Web?"
Will the download time of the pages prove frustrating in my attempts to enjoy the site?
What’s the fastest way to get to the page I want on This Great Game?
Organized baseball began way back in the mid-1800s. Why begin your Yearly Reader section in 1900?
How can I advertise in This Great Game?
What was the first baseball game you ever saw?
Do you have any expansion plans for This Great Game?
About This Great Game designer/writer Eric Gouldsberry
About This Great Game writer/interviewer Ed Attanasio
This Great Game is a comprehensive and mostly oral history of major league baseball from 1900 to the present. The heart of the site is the Yearly Reader section, which represents every year in modern major league history by including: A central oral summary; "They Were There," featuring interviews with players who bore witness or took part in baseball’s memorable moments; "Leaders & Numbers," a statistical overview of the year’s best players; a pop-up of the year’s final standings; and a pop-up called "It Happened In…", which contains capsulated reviews of the year’s list of firsts, records and oddities. Also on the site are histories of every major league team, using factoids both oral and statistical.
The Internet is populated with many wonderful web sites regarding baseball history, but most of the content they provide is strictly of a referential nature—purely statistical, with only limited prose in some cases. thisgreatgame.com is the only site we know of on the Internet that provides a thorough, written historical examination of modern big league baseball.
How did This Great Game get started?
Two lifelong baseball fans, Ed (a copywriter) and Eric (a graphic designer) met through mutual friends in 1995. Their friendship began despite the knowledge that Ed rooted for the Dodgers, Eric for the Giants. But they soon discovered something in common: They were both deep into baseball history projects. Ed, a member of SABR (The Society of American Baseball Research), was in the process of interviewing retired ballplayers for the organization’s Oral History Committee. Eric, meanwhile, was working on research, writing and design for a mammoth coffee table book entitled Major League Baseball—The Twentieth Century, an ambitious project that ultimately could find no takers in the stingy book publishing industry.
One day Eric and Ed decided to combine the strength of Eric’s book and Ed’s interviews for the Internet. They envisioned an energetic, unparalleled web site that would appeal to the casual fan all the way up to the really serious baseball researcher/historian. The result is This Great Game—the creation of two huge baseball fans with a vast amount of information about the game of baseball, and a vast amount of creativity to make it happen.
Ed originally came up with the name because he thought it was the last three words in the famous letter written to the eight 1919 Black Sox players by Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis—you know, the letter that told them they were forever banned from playing professional baseball for throwing the World Series. Well, Ed turned out to be wrong about one particular fact after purchasing the domain name. He discovered that Landis never wrote "…this great game!" Landis probably didn’t even think it! Ed must have imagined the letter or had too many beers (or hot dogs) that day, but we decided to stick with This Great Game because it’s a great name and a great game.
Why do you subtitle the site "The Book of Baseball on the Web?"
We didn’t want to be another baseball web site loaded with html type and Internet clip art. That would be a waste of time for our talents in producing This Great Game—and a waste of time for our audience. Content is one thing, presentation is another. Many baseball web sites have the former but not the latter. Our vision is to promote a pleasurable, aesthetic and informative experience, as if you were reading a coffee table book. Such a vision needs a fusion of engaging writing and inventive design that will make you want to stay logged on for hours, and we feel we have done that.
Microsoft Explorer, Firfeox, Safari and Netscape 7.0 or later should give you the most enhanced experience viewing thisgreatgame.com. Users with earlier versions of these browsers may experience less seamless views of the pages, as well as problems accessing pop-ups such as the "It Happened in..." pages.
Will the download time of the pages prove frustrating in my attempts to enjoy the site?
No. Most image-intensive web sites use multiple files to create a seamless-looking visual. The problem with that approach is it unfolds like a jigsaw puzzle and you can only sit and wait until it’s completely loaded. With the exception of the header art, most pages of This Great Game consist of a single image, saved as a .gif file in a fashion that allows it to download from top to bottom. So unless you’re a speed reader, you’ll be able to begin reading on each page almost immediately and not bump into the portion of the image still downloading below—even at existing rock bottom Internet speeds (56k). Broadband/DSL users will experience virtually no incovenience with download times.
What’s the fastest way to get to the page I want on This Great Game?
The common header at the top of each page provides links to the main pages of the site. Pages within the "Yearly Reader" section will give you on-page links to pages related to the uploaded year, as well as the "previous year" and the "next year." Say you’re in 1951 and you want to skip to the 1996 page, the quickest route is to go to the Index page, where you will be treated to an html text-only index of the entire site.
Organized baseball began way back in the mid-1800s. Why begin your Yearly Reader section with 1900?
We chose 1900 as This Great Game’s starting point for two key reasons. One was the ending of baseball’s wild 19th Century evolution, which settled down by 1900 with a set of rules that remain firmly in place today. The other was the formation of the American League, which gave birth to a long, stable rivalry with the National League—cemented with the advent of the World Series. Though the AL began play in 1901, we include 1900 as a prescript for what follows.
How did you come up with the Production Index formula that determines the top 10 hitters and pitchers of each league every year under "Leaders & Numbers"?
This will probably put frowns on the faces the likes of Bill James, but the Production Index is something that has been carefully thought over and massaged into its purest form. The discussion and defending of its merits could warrant a whole page (that page exists by clicking here), but in a nutshell it’s a combined measuring of statistics both qualitative and quantitative to determine who’s the most productive in each league both at the plate and on the mound. Any controversy aside, the Production Index for each year will be prefaced with a written introduction that will better orient the reader with the names and bring a human face to the numbers.
How can I advertise in This Great Game?
Contact Ed Attanasio at ed@thisgreatgame.com for rates and sponsorship opportunities. We offer banner ads, links and many other ways for you to get involved with thisgreatgame.com.
What was the first baseball game you ever saw?
Ed: It was in 1967 at Yankee Stadium, the Yanks vs. the Twins, I think. I remember the Yanks stunk horribly that year with an aging, hobbling Mickey Mantle and Joe Pepitone, with his ridiculous long hair and swagger. I guess at the time he was going to be the next great Bronx Bomber (laugh). We would stay after the game and hang out by the player’s parking lot and yell at them for autographs as they drove off in their Dodge Darts and Cadillacs.
Eric: My first game came in June 1972 at the Houston Astrodome. (The purists cringe.) The Astros lost to the New York Mets, 5-4. The nine-year old in me got a kick out of hearing the prerecorded bugle calling for the fans to yell, "Charge!" Willie Mays, 41 years young, appeared as a pinch hitter and received a standing ovation just for being there. My favorite memory of the game came when I shouted at Astro third baseman Doug Rader to hit a home run—and on the next pitch, he did just that.
Do you have any expansion plans for This Great Game?
We’re working on what other features and content could be added to This Great Game. So we have ideas, but we encourage you to come up with some of your own and let us know about it.
About This Great Game designer/writer Eric Gouldsberry
Eric Gouldsberry is owner of Eric Gouldsberry Art Direction (EGAD), a graphic design firm operating out of Silicon Valley, California since 1987. Eric has specialized in art direction for both graphic design and advertising, creating and producing corporate brochures and collateral, logos/brand identity, ads, periodicals, web sites and annual reports. Eric’s creative writing background goes all the way back to the age of 12, when he wrote sports articles for the Saratoga News. His combined love for design, writing and baseball has led him to produce two books on the game: Major League Baseball—The Twentieth Century, the unpublished contents of which now live in This Great Game; and Ballpark Nouveau: The Modern Palaces of Baseball, a project currently in development which details the new wave of big league ballparks since the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. You can check out the work of EGAD at www.gouldsberry.com, and you can reach Eric via e-mail at eric@thisgreatgame.com
About This Great Game writer/interviewer Ed Attanasio
Ed Attanasio is a freelance advertising and editorial writer, standup comedian and baseball nut. He is a member of SABR and interviews retired ballplayers for their Oral History Committee; in July 2004 he received the David Paulson Oral History Award, awarded by SABR. Ed lives in San Francisco with his three dogs. You can reach Ed via e-mail at ed@thisgreatgame.com
All web site content © 2008 This Great Game.com