Sean Lahman

Sean Lahman (born June 9, 1968) (pronounced "lay-men") is an author and journalist. He currently is a reporter for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and frequently makes public appearances to speak about database journalism, data mining and open source databases. Since 2011 he has also written a weekly column on emerging technology and patents.

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. In addition to fostering research, the Lahman Database also made it possible for baseball simulation games, such as Baseball Mogul and Out of the Park Baseball, to recreate historical seasons from actual baseball history.

In the mid-1990s, Lahman created the first online baseball encyclopedia at his Baseball Archive website. He later sold the website to Total Sports and became senior editor for that company's print publishing division. The encyclopedia disappeared from the web when Total Sports declared bankruptcy. It was later reborn as Baseball-Reference.com, and Lahman resurrected the Baseball Archive website as a platform to continue the free distribution of his database. He currently works with the Society for American Baseball Research to coordinate data collection projects, including an effort to build a database for minor league baseball

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