Well that didn’t take long, did it now.
After 10 months in the shop, mbtn.net is back and rebuilt behind a new power plant — a database referencing every instance a player was in uniform for the Mets.
This new tool has re-organized the guts of the site so as to allow for references by number, by name, or by date. It integrates the the all-time numerical roster with the content of the site, bringing some much-needed organization and improved accuracy to the world’s first and only rundown of every player in Met history and the number they wore in their moment.
The site is live now at its signature address, mbtn.net as well as at metsbythenumbers.com, the alleged “temporary site” that went up last spring while the old site went down for repairs.
Though it wasn’t exactly drawn up this way, it’s fortunate that new site got done in time for the release of Mets by the Numbers, due in bookstores any time now. The book, written by myself along with Matthew Silverman and published by Skyhorse Publishing, is based on the original reserach and stories posted to this address over the years and illustrated with baseball cards from my very own collection. I hope you’ll buy one (my book, not my cards — they’re not for sale).
The original idea in fact was to use a revamped web page in service of writing the book but a few false starts and my own cluelessness prevented that from happening sooner. Fortunately I got solid relief work from a good web guy who helped trash an earlier version of the new site that while half-done, never worked quite the way I wanted it to.
And while this site still requires some minor tweaks and the addition of some of the old content, what’s important is that it accounts for 821 players and their uni numbers and archives posts from the old site back to its infancy in 2000. I can’t express how great it is to operate a data-driven site where the data is actually and finally organized. More cool stuff is to come.
I’ll talk about how to navigate the site in a future post.
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