Most sports fans know Sports Reference as the internet’s definitive home for stats, as the bottomless, addictively clickable archives that power research, fuel debates, and settle arguments all over the world.

What far fewer know, however, is that this global, sports-data powerhouse operates not from Manhattan or Silicon Valley, but from a nondescript office at Summit Presbyterian Church in Mount Airy.

There, from the third floor of a building attached to the church, Sean Forman stewards a devotion different than the kind expressed below in hallowed pews and amidst stained glass. As the founder and president of Sports Reference, he oversees the most revered statistical engines in all of sports, which serve a million users every day and generate almost two billion pageviews a year.

Where Numbers and Sports First Collided

“Math was always my favorite subject; it came very easily,” Forman said, reflecting on the origins of a passion that eventually reshaped how millions of people consume sports. “And I was just always interested in sports and numbers. They’ve always gone together for me.”

The mix started early. Forman grew up in Manning, Iowa (pop. 1,500), the son of a high school football coach, immersed in Friday night lights … and box scores. He played everything his small high school offered — football, basketball, baseball, and golf — in the kind of environment where half the boys suited up for football simply because the school needed the numbers.

So, numbers mattered. Accuracy mattered. And sports were the perfect canvas.

A Professor, a Website, and a Leap of Faith

Forman earned a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Iowa, and he arrived in Philadelphia in 2000 after accepting a position as a professor of math and computer science at Saint Joseph’s University.

By then, Baseball Reference, the flagship of Sports Reference’s collection of nine sites, was already alive. It started in his final year of graduate school as a side project. While he was a full-time professor at Saint Joseph’s, he would update Baseball Reference on nights and weekends. It wasn’t sophisticated, it wasn’t profitable, and it had only a fraction of today’s audience.

But it kept growing. And so did the costs.

To cover server expenses, Forman launched what he laughingly calls an “NPR model” — a note asking readers to chip in a few bucks. He handwrote postcards to donors.

Then came the next innovation: the ability to sponsor a player page.

“We kind of structured it by who was more popular,” Forman said. “(Phillies Hall of Famer) Mike Schmidt might go for $50, (second baseman) Mickey Morandini for $25.”

Some fans bought them for fun; others used them as mini-billboards. It worked enough to keep the site alive.

Until a mention in Sports Illustrated in 2002 caused Baseball Reference to crash for almost a month.

“As we became more popular, we wanted to hire people, so we needed to monetize our product at a higher level,” Forman said. “So, we started running ads and building relationships with programmatic ad providers.”

By the mid-2000s, as traffic soared and online advertising matured, Forman realized the project had grown larger than his academic career.

He took a one-year leave from Saint Joseph’s in 2006, and he never went back.

A Site the Entire Sports World Uses

Sports Reference’s network of sites generates five million pageviews each day. The audience spans diehard fans, broadcasters, front-office analysts, and the athletes themselves.

“We heard from a former NBA player who was running for governor, because he didn’t want his salary figures on the site,” Forman said. “He was trying to kind of strong-arm us into taking them down.”

Relatives of athletes often reach out, as well.

“When (pitcher) Casey Fossum debuted for the Red Sox (in 2001), and we put up his page, his mom emailed to tell us we had his birthplace wrong,” Forman said. “She said, ‘I was there when he was born, so I should know.’”

Sometimes, the emails come from sports royalty.

“I was at an event at the Baseball Hall of Fame and was introduced to Cal Ripken Jr.,” Forman said of the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Famer who holds the record for most consecutive games played. “He said, ‘Oh, I emailed you guys about something.’ I was like, ‘Really, you did? I hope you got a response.’ He was preparing for a broadcast and said we got back to him right away with the answer to his question. When I got back to the office, I asked our customer success guy if Cal Ripken Jr. emailed us. He said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s when I instituted a rule at the company that if a Hall of Famer emails us, we have to let the whole team know.”

Sports Reference’s traffic map, the visual tool that shows pageviews by location, is also a source of pride, if not amusement.

“The new Pope (Leo XIV) is reportedly a big baseball fan,” Forman said, laughingly. “We’ve recently received a handful of hits from Vatican City. We like to imagine it’s him.”

From an ESPN Offer to the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee

In 2008, ESPN made a lucrative bid to acquire Sports Reference. Forman declined.

He had just left academia and believed the company’s best years were still ahead. And he worried that giving up control meant giving up the spirit that made the sites special.

He has no regrets.

Today, Sports Reference sits at 43 employees, spread across the U.S. and even as far away as Delhi, India, where a full-time SEO specialist has been working for four years. Before the pandemic, most employees worked in the Mount Airy office. Post-pandemic, the company leaned into remote work.

Only Forman now uses the church office daily. Yet the community remains deeply tied to Philadelphia.

“We get the team together in person twice a year,” he said. “Every December, we bring everyone to Philly — it’s a tradition where some people even bring their kids — and it’s been neat to see people kind of connect with Philly.”

Sports Reference is also deeply integrated into baseball’s institutions, as it compiles comprehensive data for the Hall of Fame (such as voting results, player eligibility, and historical election data) and the Rawlings Gold Glove Awards.

“Two years ago, I served on the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee, which was very stressful, but also a big thrill,” Forman said. “It’s wonderful to have those experiences and very gratifying that people recognize your work.”

It’s all a reminder of what Sports Reference has quietly become: a universal language for sports lovers everywhere.

Tomorrow morning, while millions of sports fans refresh their browsers, Forman will again walk through the doors of Summit Presbyterian, climb the stairs, and sit down in the little office where the sports world’s greatest statistical resource continues to grow, one row of data at a time.

As long as there are questions to answer, records to verify, and stories hiding in the numbers, Sports Reference, anchored in Philadelphia, will be in the background, quietly shaping how the world understands the games it loves.

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Mark Hostutler is the Senior Editorial Engineer at American Community Journals and the author of Heads of State: Pennsylvania’s Greatest High School Basketball Players of the Modern Era.