Thome at 611

Years ago I was introduced to this book by a colleague with a much larger brain than mine. At the time I was doing a lot of technical presentations and longed to breakaway from the "art in the dark" PowerPoint culture and find better ways to effectively display data.

I was fascinated to the point of frequenting Edward Tufte's web site, purchasing other Edward Tufte books and actually attending one of his day long seminars with my team.

This journey towards better data visualization has led me to become a big fan of Craig Robinson and his awe inspiring baseball site called FLIP FLOP FLY BALL. He hooked me in August of 2010 with his roster display of the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics dynasty and I have been an Flip Flop addict ever since. Here is a handy link to all FFFB's tagged infographics, prepare to spend a couple of hours savoring these. Although not heavy with data, the lesson on ball cap sticker removal is an absolute classic. Also, his own personal log of headwear should resonate with hat lovers every where.

If you are mildly interested in this stuff... I strongly suggest you follow Craig on Twitter and Tumblr.

Where is all this going? This weekend I couldn't stand watching the Phillies continue to fall into the abyss and I changed the channel to watch the Orioles instead. I got to enjoy Jim Thome smashing his first two dingers in a Baltimore uniform. These were career home runs #610 and #611 for Big Jim. I was inspired to sit down and take a shot at my own "visualization" of Thome's career:

I had forgotten that Thome did not homer during his 17 game pinch hitting stint with the 2009 LA Dodgers. In the event that blogger re-sizes the original image, here is a link to inteneded 1680x1050 resolution. I just hope I have left enough room for more "Orioles Orange" dingers at the bottom.