* A new slant on baseball issues

Thanks to the NY Times’ Freakonomics blog, I came across FlipFlopFlyball, an off-shoot of flipflopflyin.com, which offers some unusual charts regarding the national pastime. In one, we see just how many Native Americans actually live in Cleveland (which gave me a few ideas for future charts)*, an unusual representation of when teams broke the color line, how far the average number of pitches in a single season might extend, and how much stolen bases are really worth.

The site is the brainchild of Craig Robinson, a 38-year-old ex-pat Brit living, for a little while at least, in Bellingham, Wash., though through a series of unfortunate circumstances, he will be moving to Berlin in the near future. But he graciously took a few minutes to answer some questions about FlipFlopFlyball.

***

Bookshelf: Where did the idea for FlipFlopFlyball come from?
Robinson: Well, it all came about because I’m relatively new to the game. There’s so much history to learn, and I think baseball does a good job at keeping the history important and relevant. I’m not very good at retaining information, so making visual aids helps. That and I’m just curious about a lot of things. As I’m sure you’re well aware, baseball lends itself well to thinking about stuff while the game is going on.

I’m English. I’ve been a frequent visitor, I spent last summer here, and I’ve been here for eight months, but things didn’t work out, so I’m going back to Europe and late nights watching games on MLB.com. I was on a business trip, and expressed an interest in going to see a game, so one of the guys I was working with — a Yankee fan — sorted out tickets and we went a couple of days later. It was that that sparked the interest. I sometimes have moral conflicts about the organization, but you can’t help which uniform you root for, huh? My favorite player, though, is Ichiro. Always a joy to watch, even if he’s seemingly doing nothing, just stood around in right field.

Bookshelf: How long have you been doing these?
Robinson: Since about 2006, but most of the stuff has been doing this year.

Bookshelf: How do you create the graphics?
Robinson: I use Excel to statistically create the charts, but I pretty them up in Photoshop.

Bookshelf: I see the posts are fairly sporadic. Are they time consuming to produce?
Robinson: Some more so that others. I tend to do them when an idea for something pops into my head. I’m a freelance illustrator and I create these when my work schedule allows me the time to get into it. I don’t really like starting and stopping during making one, so it’s good to have a day or two to concentrate.

Bookshelf: So, what’s up with the minipops (right)?
Robinson: Ha. Erm, I dunno, I started drawing those in 1999, just to see how small I could draw people and have them still be recognizable. The baseball ones are filleted out of a much larger collection on my main website.

* More team-related queries:

How many native Americans reside in Atlanta?
What is the bear, tiger, diamondback, blue jay, oriole, marlin, cardinal, and devil ray population in those respective locations?
How many inmates are there in the Pittsburgh prison system?
How many astronauts live/work in Houston (and NASA employees in general)?
How many communists live in Cincinnati?
How many members of royal families in KC?
How many America-born Northerners live in NY?
How many brewmeisters live in Milwaukee?
How many fisherman in Seattle, both professional and recreational?
How many members of the Texas Rangers law enforcement department in Texas?
How many people over 6’10” in San Francisco?
How many clergymen (and/or nurses or theatrical producers) in Los Angeles/Anaheim and San Diego (Christian only)?
How many sets of twins live in Minn./St. Paul?
How many athletes (people who participate in sports) in Oakland, again, professional and recreational?
How many U.S. citizens in reside in Washington DC?
How many clothing stores in Chicago and Boston that sell socks (well assume red and white would be included)?