Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
Email me at btimmermann@gmail.com
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Chris Jaffe of The Hardball Times has a nice interview with Dave Smith, the founder of Retrosheet, which is an invention that is worth more to mankind than even sliced bread and is duking it out with the smallpox vaccine. You know, the thing that left the funny mark on your upper arm with four holes. If you don't have one, you're too young.
What inspired you to start this website?
The organization began informally in 1989 with the plan to distribute data by floppy disk. Of course, it would be four years before we had any full seasons to distribute! By that time, the internet was really beginning to take off and it was an obvious choice for us. Since our bedrock core principle from day one has been that we would always give our information for free to anyone who wanted it, then the internet was not only convenient, but an ideal vehicle for us. So in 1994 the website started in a very modest way.
How do you finance the site?
We don't have much in the way of real dollar costs, just the monthly fee for the website and some expenses for copying game accounts, etc. Those costs are easily covered by donations we receive, the bulk of which have come from the Retrosheet Board of Directors and webmaster. Our major "financing" is from the enormous number of hours put in by volunteers, literally thousands of hours. I shudder to think what the real dollar cost of their skilled, selfless work would be on the open market.
If someone wants to donate money to Retrosheet, how should they contact you to do it?
There are two ways. Either make out a check to Retrosheet and send it to me or use the PayPal link on the front page of our website. I wish to stress that no one should feel obligated to make a donation, no matter how much they use the website.
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