I love baseball generally and the Red Sox in particular. I was born into it. My mother was a die hard Boston fan, as was her father. And that was surprising, because they were both born and raised in New York. When she was a teenager, my mom told me, she used to babysit the kids of some Brooklyn Dodgers ballplayers. But when the Dodgers headed west and my mom headed north to Rhode Island for college, their allegiance switched to the Red Sox. And that’s where I came in.
I have vivid memories of hearing the sounds of the games on the radio. In fact, I wasn’t really listening, but they were a soundtrack to the summer on the AM car radio as we ran weekend chores, or on the TV. Unfortunately for my grandfather, I really didn’t care too much about baseball, or any sports really, as a child. I suspect he wished I had.
But sometime after I too moved further north, to Boston, to attend college myself, I was suddenly hooked. I don’t remember when or why it happened, but suddenly I couldn’t get enough of it. I enjoyed going to the games, oftentimes stopping in for “dinner” and a game at Fenway after work at my first job. I liked watching them on TV, and especially in those days, listening to them on the radio. I enjoyed learning about the history of the Red Sox and other ball clubs, and I relished in the stats. Fortunately, I was able to share a lot of that passion with my mom before she died in 2000. No doubt, like so many other New Englanders then, 2004 was a bittersweet season. Elation mixed with regret that entire generations, including my grandfather’s and my mother’s had been born and had died without getting to see the Red Sox as World Series champions.
These days I get to Fenway Park a few times a year. Each time is not just a fun experience, it’s literally a moving one. In 2014 I took my first tour of the park and, as historical spots were pointed out, I could feel overwhelming emotions, like pride for my team and a sense of my place in the context of so many generations of fans before me.
Baseball in the Age of Twitter
You probably could never have convinced me a few years ago that watching baseball with Twitter by my side would be better than without it. I was wrong. Twitter is filled with passionate fans like myself. People who follow the game just as closely. And while the vast majority are not people you’ll have a meaningful conversation with, my experience has been really positive with quite a few folks. In the offseason after the 2013 World Series championship I started to realize just how much I missed the regular baseball conversations with my Twitter friends.
At first I started watching the games while tweeting my thoughts at my primary account, @rdelrossi, about how the game was going. Over time, that morphed into a blend of thoughts and stats. So many stats, with new ones created every day of the long season. Soon I was tweeting copiously as the games unfolded, scouring one source and another for stats that were relevant to the moment at hand . And not shortly after that, some of my other Twitter followers started dropping off because there was just too much baseball in my Twitter feed. And honestly, I could understand it. Until then the majority of my Twitter activity had nothing to do with sports. In fact, far from it. And the people who followed me were excused for not being interested in some esoteric Red Sox-oriented statistic.
So starting in 2013 I opened up a new Twitter account called @RSNStats™, with news and statistics for the passionate denizens of Red Sox Nation. It was a great move. I encouraged anyone who followed me for baseball to move on over to @RSNStats and many did. New followers joined in too, and now we have a regular dialog about Red Sox games just for people who care about those game. @RSNStats coverage is exclusively about the Red Sox.
The @RSNStats feed on Twitter is definitely a lot of data and it’s not for everyone. When a Twitter friend didn’t follow I asked why, since I knew she was a loyal Red Sox fan. No offense, she said, just too many stats. So to address this, in 2016 I introduced @RSNStatsNews™, which publishes a subset of what you get on @RSNStats. It’s news for Red Sox Nation but without the flow of stats. If you’re already subscribed to @RSNStats, you probably don’t need to subscribe to @RSNStatsNews, as well.
Late in 2017 I debuted the newest account in the RSNStats franchise: @RSNStatsPLUS+™, which is exclusively for special event and extra coverage of interest to Red Sox fans. One of the first events covered here included stats for the 2017 Wild Card Game between the Yankees and Twins. Content on @RSNStatsPLUS+ won’t typically appear on the other RSNStats channels, so if you’re a hardcore baseball fan, you may appreciate adding @RSNStatsPLUS+ to your lineup.
Twitter has its limitations, of course. I started this site with an eye towards having a little more room to expand on my posts and, hopefully, engage in some meaningful discussion with fellow fans. In 2015 I extended the franchise with a Facebook Fan Page for RSNStats.
I’m often asked how I know so much about baseball stats. The truth is, RSNStats, in its various forms, relies on data from many sources, particularly baseball-reference.com and multitudes of books and other web sites. I pride myself on being a good consumer of the information available and have worked hard to develop technology and processes to quickly access the kind of data that my followers find interesting in a specific context. I try to credit sources of information regularly (and particularly when it applies to breaking news). I’m indebted, as we all are, to those who so diligently catalog baseball’s long history.
Reaching me
Happy to hear your thoughts, though I certainly can’t assure you of a reply. You can email me at rdr at rsnstats dot com. If you’re interested in a specific stat for our favorite team, just use the form here. Again, can’t assure you of a reply, but I’ll do my best.
I enjoy Twitter. For non-baseball topics you can find an active feed from me there as @rdelrossi. It covers a lot of my other interests, including business, technology, history, and the arts. You can also find me on the web at www.robertdelrossi.com.
This site and Twitter are my primary social media outreach. To a far lesser degree I’m on Facebook and Google+, the value for neither of which I can’t claim to fully understand. I use LinkedIn to stay in touch with business contacts and to post the things I think that circle of acquaintances might appreciate. Professionally, my background is in technology, operations, and general management. I’ve worked around the world, though headquarters today is in Rhode Island. For business inquiries, you can reach me at rdr at robertdelrossi dot com.
Disclosure
RSNStats is a labor of love by an ardent fan. I’m not an employee of the Red Sox, Major League Baseball, or any media outlet.
RSNStats.com has some limited advertising, in large part for the pleasure of understanding how that technology works. The advertising is applied lightly and in such way that, I hope, does not detract any value from my content.
When I post links to products on Amazon or on the iTunes App Store, for example, my links may include a referral code so that when products are purchased after clicking on the link, I may receive a small percentage of the sale. While the amount that I receive is small, it does help to defray some of the cost of maintaining this site, and gives me a small vested interest in having my readers purchase products using these links.
The fact that I might receive this form compensation does not, in my view, affect what I say or do not say on my website. This is kind of a “chicken and egg” situation. I’ve posted these recommendations to products based on what I like; I am not posting links to things I do not like in order to earn a few cents in compensation. If you don’t care for this arrangement, just skip the links and shop on your own.