I’m a product leader, designer, and developer with over twenty years of experience with tech companies of all types—from tiny startups to billion dollar unicorns. I’m the Director of Product for Sports Reference, LLC (I purposely avoided the word “currently” because I want to be here forever). We make Baseball Reference, Basketball Reference, Pro Football Reference, Hockey Reference, FBref, College Basketball Reference, College Football Reference, Stathead, and Immaculate Grid. Previously, I was part of the product teams at ezCater, Dribbble, HubSpot, and PatientsLikeMe.
At Sports Reference, I get to combine my passion for building incredibly lovable and aggressively functional products with my love of sports. In my free time, I’m a tireless baseball researcher focused on the overlooked. That can take on many forms. In 2012, I launched the Hall of Stats, an alternate Hall of Fame that aims to shed light on the careers of overlooked stars. I am a member of SABR (The Society for American Baseball Research) and am co-chair of their Overlooked Nineteenth Century Base Ball Legends Committee. More recently, my research has focused on the Negro Leagues and Black and Latin American baseball before Jackie Robinson’s re-breaking of baseball’s color barrier in 1947.
I’ve been on Twitter since 2007 and cherish the connections I’ve made there. These days, I mostly tweet about baseball history at @baseballtwit. If you need to get in touch with me, my DMs are open. I also live-tweet Borussia Dortmund matches on my soccer account, @fussballtwit. Every once in a while, I check my original @adarowski account. I also have an account for the @hallofstats.
In case you’re looking for something a little more professional.
I love making things. Here are a few of my side projects.
An alternate Hall of Fame populated by a mathematical formula, I launched the Hall of Stats over ten years ago with the help of my friends Jeffrey Chupp and Michael Berkowitz.
The 25th Infantry Wreckers were an all-Black Army baseball team that rose to prominence in the years surrounding World War I due to a dominant roster that included Hall of Famer Wilber “Bullet” Rogan, Negro League stars Oscar “Heavy” Johnson and Walter “Dobie” Moore, and several other players who had careers in the Negro Leagues. I collected box scores for the team’s time in Hawaii and built this site to share (for the first time) their statistics.
Before Jackie Robinson re-broke the color line in 1947, there was an abundance of Black and Afro-Latino talent playing baseball outside of the American and National Leagues. These stars played not only in the Negro Leagues, but also in leagues all over the Western Hemisphere. This personal project collects stats for many of these stars, such as Silvio García and Ramon Bragaña.
I am a massive supporter of German football club Borussia Dortmund. In 2021, the club launched its women’s football program. I created the first site dedicated to the team and posted match results and statistics.
My friend and fellow researcher Graham Womack of Baseball Past and Present collected Hall of Fame Veterans Committee voting history (something that is notoriously difficult to find). I built this site to make it easier to navigate.
This podcast covers the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Era Committees. Guests include (frequent co-host) Graham Womack, Jay Jaffe, Graig Kreindler, Mark Armour, Gary Ashwill, Scott Simkus, Kevin Johnson, and more.
This podcast chronicles my journey learning about the Negro Leagues and pre-segregation baseball outside of the Negro Leagues. Guests include Scott Simkus, Phil S. Dixon, Jorge Colón Delgado, Bill S. Staples, Jr., and more.
Jorge Colón Delgado, official historican of the Puerto Rican Baseball League, reached out to me about helping him produce a webinar series about the relationship between Negro League stars and Puerto Rican baseball. The series has covered stars such as Josh Gibson and lesser known legends such as Francisco “Pancho” Coimbre. For this series, I act as moderator and I am lucky to be able to sit back and learn from Jorge and other panelists.
My exploration into the 25th Infantry Wreckers began as part of my research for my first contributions to the SABR Biography Project. So far, I have written biographies for Oscar “Heavy” Johnson and Walter “Dobie” Moore. Up next is the biography for Hurley McNair.
Many years ago, I played guitar and bass in local bands. In 2014, I started recording music again on my own. First came YAY!, a full-length album released in 2015. More recently, I’ve released Dobie & Heavy, a two-song EP about the subjects of my SABR biographies—Dobie Moore and Heavy Johnson.
I’ve been on several podcasts to talk about everything from our work at Sports Reference to individual players. Want to chat? Reach out to me on Twitter or email me at adarowski [at] gmail.
Immaculate Talk, September 29, 2023
Immaculate Talk, September 27, 2023
580 WCHS, July 27, 2023
This Week in Baseball History, July 18, 2023
SABRcast, July 17, 2023
Conversations with Sports Fans, May 25, 2023
The BVB Podcast, May 24, 2023
Pod of Fame, April 10, 2023
Pod of Fame, January 2, 2023
For Your Reference, A Sports Reference Podcast, October 4, 2022
OOTPNow, September 9, 2022
Obscureball, June 1, 2022
Legends Sports, January 19, 2022
Cleveland’s Team. A Baseball History Podcast., January 14, 2022
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast, Decemeber 8, 2021
1988 Topps Podcast, December 6, 2021
Hey Buddy! Podcast, December 3, 2021
Pod of Fame, November 29, 2021
Fangraphs Audio, November 24, 2021
Pod of Fame, November 22, 2021
South Side Sox, November 19, 2021
Sports Info Solutions Baseball Podcast, June 24, 2021
Baseball Beyond Batting Average, March 6, 2021
1988 Topps Podcast, February 28, 2021
Hey Buddy! Podcast, February 15, 2021