An Inside Look at GeoJSON Ballparks

I've spent the last 5+ years trying to map every professional ballpark in the world. I've failed but that's OK.

Transcript

1. James Fee - October 14, 2020
   GeoJSON Ballparks
   When a simple twitter question sparks a passion for mapping
   

   View Slide

2. Baseball?
   

   View Slide

3. Baseball?
   A soccer football fan’s introduction to America’s pastime
   • Possibly derived from Rounders or Cricket
   
   • First recorded games occurred by 1845 in NYC
   
   • Professional baseball started in 1876 and eventually became the MLB which
   governs baseball today
   
   • San Francisco Giants have won 11,194 games since founding in 1883.
   

   View Slide

4. Playing Baseball
   • Two teams
   
   • 9 innings
   
   • 3 outs/team each inning
   
   • Pitcher/Batter
   
   • Fielders
   
   • Hit/Out
   
   • Rounding bases
   

   View Slide

5. Baseball Data
   

   View Slide

6. Statistics
   Baseball is a fountain of data for analysis
   • Sabermetrics - empirical analysis of baseball statistics
   
   • Retrosheet - computerizing the box score of every major league baseball
   game ever played
   
   • Chadwick Baseball Bureau - Clean baseball data
   
   • Moneyball -
   

   View Slide

7. Ballparks as GeoJSON
   

   View Slide

8. Map Every Professional Baseball Ballpark
   

   View Slide

9. Right?
   • License (ODC-By)
   
   • Github
   
   • These aren’t POIs
   Why Not OSM?
   

   View Slide

10. Innocent Question
    Twitter as a Idea Factory
    

    View Slide

11. Mapping Every Professional Ballpark
    If only it was easy
    • Requirements to map ballpark
    
    • Professional baseball team
    
    • Find the stadium
    
    • Map lat/long of home plate
    

    View Slide

12. Hardest Problem?
    Google is no help
    • Finding a stadium
    
    • Teams don’t always play in the same stadium year after year
    
    • Address for team is usually an office building
    
    • Stadium names are vague
    
    • Imagery is usually poor outside of NA/EU/AUS/JPN/Korea
    
    • Wikipedia - but….
    

    View Slide

13. Sherlock
    Searching for a stadium with no info
    • Google Images
    
    • Social Media
    
    • Exif
    
    • Old fashioned panning Google Earth and feeling lucky
    

    View Slide

14. View Slide

15. View Slide

16. View Slide

17. View Slide

18. X
    

    View Slide

19. Getting Involved
    

    View Slide

20. GeoJSON Ballparks - https://github.com/cageyjames/GeoJSON-Ballparks
    
    Chadwick - https://github.com/chadwickbureau
    
    R baseball - https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com
    
    Retrosheet - https://www.retrosheet.org
    

    View Slide

21. james@fee.fm
    James Fee
    Twitter - @jamesmfee
    https://www.spatiallyadjusted.com
    Github - @cageyjames
    

    View Slide