www.mlb.com
Not surprisingly, this is where you will find the official gospel on just about anything major league. Use it as a portal to enter any of the 30 official MLB team sites, the content and aesthetics of which are all centralized within mlb.com. Dial-up users, be warned: Patience is a virtue on this site, with a download time that will test even those with their whole lives ahead of them.
Retrosheet
www.retrosheet.org
The best and most aggressive source for baseball statistics to be found on the Internet. Founded in 1989, Retrosheet is a non-profit group that has actively sought play-by-play accounts of all major league games, and currently has every major league box score online going back to the 1950s; it reasonably hopes to soon extend that list back to the 1940s. If you had baseball nuts for relatives and they have bequeathed to you, who knows what they may have left in the way of old scoresheets, gold in the eyes of Retrosheet. This Great Game is proud to use Retrosheet as its primary source for statistics accrual.
Baseball Reference
www.baseballreference.com
Whereas Retrosheet focuses on statistical intensity, Baseball Reference spreads the wealth a bit to include facts and figures from areas such as salaries and awards voting. So while Baseball Reference frequently overlaps Retrosheet, it’s still a worthy resource in its own right.
Society of American Baseball Research
www.sabr.org
It you want to get deep—we mean, really deep—into baseball history, take a good look at SABR. Looking for something highly obscure in the annals of the game? Chances are, someone at SABR has done the research. To truly experience SABR, becoming an active member will get you much farther than a visit to their web site, but it’s a good start.
Baseball Library
www.baseballlibrary.com
The comprehensive beauty of Baseball Library is in its year-by-year capsules of every big league team, as well as bios of almost every major leaguer who’s ever played. It also highlights The Baseball Index by SABR, an online bibliography section for many major leaguers past and present.
Baseball Almanac
www.baseball-almanac.com
For you baseball pop culturists, this may be your site. Sure, it contains the usual statistics and data found on many of the other sites listed here, but Baseball Almanac’s strength lies in some of its more trivial information banks: Sections on humor and jokes, poetry and song, quotations, movies and baseball families.
Ballparks by Munsey and Suppes
www.ballparks.com
The most reliable source of information related to major league ballparks of the past, present and the future. The site includes images and content detailing the facts and history of every ballpark ever built. Also includes information on facilities for other major sports.
The Obligatory Listing of Major Media Web Sites
sports.espn.go.com/mlb/
sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/
www.usatoday.com/sports/mlb.htm
www.sportsline.com/mlb/
The four major media sites listed above are tops among major news organizations in their reporting and informative resources related to the majors. They’re all fairly similar to one another in what they offer, mostly focusing on current baseball events. Just prepare to do a little cleaning up of pop-unders when you’re done.
John Skilton’s Baseball Links
www.baseball-links.com
Upset that we haven’t given you a link to every baseball site imaginable? We present you with Mr. John Skilton. Baseball-links.com categorizes over 10,000 baseball-related sites into sections such as high school baseball, cards and collectables, camps and clinics and audio broadcasts. If you can’t find what you’re looking for here, you’re on your own, brother.
The Baseball Cube
www.thebaseballcube.com
This detailed site doesn’t just give you stats on major leaguers once they reached The Show, but also how they did in the minors, college and even spring training stats. If you really want to dig deep on your research and discover how a player developed over the years even before he made it to the bigs, here’s a fine place to go.