Sean Lahman

Sean Lahman created the first online baseball encyclopedia, and is well known for his work documenting the history of American sports. He is most noted for the Lahman Baseball Database, a collection of baseball statistics for every team and player in Major League history. Starting in 1995, he made this database freely available for download from the Internet, helping to launch a new era of baseball research by making the raw data available to everyone. Lahman edited more than a dozen encyclopedias, including "The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia" and "Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball." His 2008 book "The Pro Football Historical Abstract" received the Nelson Ross Award, presented annually for "outstanding achievement in pro football research and historiography" by the Pro Football Researchers Association. Lahman currently is data editor and technology columnist for the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.