It's been a truly historic season in Major League Baseball this year. Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn retire as certain future Hall of Famers. Barry Bonds broke Mark McGwire's record only three years after McGwire had topped Roger Marris' long-standing mark of 61. Ricky Henderson broke Ty Cobb's runs record, and the Mariners tied the record of most games ever won by a team. Now as we head into the post-season, I felt it was a good opportunity to examine baseball resources online.

Sports can be an incredible context for integration. Much like the Olympics and the Iditarod, baseball offers all kinds of possibilities for integration into math, science, language arts, and social studies. Depending on the age of your students, you can design a Fall baseball unit that either makes tangential connections to suitable places in your curriculum or totally immerse your class in the legends, lore and strategy of this most American of games. And your unit can lead right through the upcoming World Series! Thanks to Jerry B for his site suggestions. Explore the possibilities in this week's edition!

• Baseball Almanac - http://www.baseball-almanac.com/
  Billing itself as the "official" baseball history site, this comprehensive endeavor covers anything and everything that has to do with the traditions and culture of this grand old game: autographs, famous firsts, legends, movies, poems and songs, even presidents! It's a very busy page layout, so it's more suitable for use by older students. But a teacher who zeros in on desirable content ahead of time can have his/her students eating up all the lore and history showcased here.
• Baseball.....and Math - http://tqjunior.thinkquest.org/6082/5stm.html
  The John F. Pattie Elementary School right here in nearby Dumfries, Virginia created this website as a ThinkQuest Junior entry that explores the math in the game of baseball. There are simple estimation and calculation activities as well as word problems in which students have to select the correct function in order to solve problems. Answers are offered through the magic of Java-script. There's also two wordfind games at the end of the activities menu.
• Baseball Cards: 1887 - 1914 - http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bbhtml/bbhome.html
  The Library of Congress offers this impressive collection of early baseball cards, including Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Cy Young, Connie Mack, Walter Johnson, King Kelly, and Christy Mathewson. You can search by keyword, player, team, league, city and card set. For more fun, visit Kidstats <http://www.stats.com/kids/players/cards.html>for the top 20 contemporary players in printable baseball card formats, and Topps Baseball <http://www.topps.com/SportsCollect/Baseball/index.html> for checklists of current baseball card sets.
• Baseball Slang - http://www.sikids.com/games/slang/baseball/index.html
  Bring baseball into your language arts with this great collection of definitions brought to you by Sports Illustrated for Kids! Each definition is accompanied by an animated, often humorous demonstration of the meaning of the term. There's "heat" in which the Big Unit burns a pitch right through an opponent's bat and "moonshot" in which Big Mac hits a homer to the moon. Imagine the ways kids can play with language using this site!
• Baseball Stats - http://www16.brinkster.com/bbstats/
  Teaching division? ratios? Percentages? Here's a site with all the statistics you'll ever need to get math and baseball on the same playing field. And it's not just by player or team. There's MVPs, Triple Crown Winners, Rookies of the Year, All-stars - everything kids are interested in studying when it comes to their favorite players. The three-year and decade rankings are especially useful, compiling the top numbers for players in a variety of categories. Teacher's are only limited by their imagination in the creative ways this site can be integrated into a baseball unit.
• Baseball: The Game and Beyond - http://library.thinkquest.org/11902/
  This ThinkQuest entry examines baseball and it many intricacies, from how a curve ball is thrown to how an earned run average is calculated. There's a "baseball and Physics Dictionary" that is fully searchable and covers everything from assist and bunt to velocity and wavelength. If you click to use the frames version, a quick sports ticker rattles of interesting trivia very half-a-minute or so. The "Jump To" applet no longer functions, so use the links at the bottom of the front page to find your way around.
• Baseball Word Search - http://www.kidsdomain.com/sports/baseball/games/word1.html
  Kid's Domain presents this simple JAVA-based puzzle along with a harder, more challenging puzzle of baseball terms. Just use your mouse to click and drag across a found term and it automatically becomes encircled right on the screen! There's also printable versions of baseball wordfinds, word jumbles and coloring pages. Great for lower elementary grades.
• Batter's Up Baseball - http://www.prongo.com/math/
  This Flash-based baseball simulation allows students to practice up to two-digit multiplication facts by selecting singles (one digit problems), doubles (two-digit by one-digit problems) and home runs (two-digit by two-digit problems). There's a time fact or involved so estimation skills are important, and players get three strikes for each problem and three outs for the game. The animation and sound effects add to the experience as strikes and hits are called out loud.
• Graphical History of Baseball - http://home.istar.ca/~mbein/baseball.html
  This simple site presents graphs of baseball statistics over the twentieth century, including hitting, pitching and fielding. There are comparisons between National and American leagues and (in some cases) league leaders versus league averages. The data presented here offers a great opportunity for analyzing graphs and making generalizations based in longitudinal data. What are the general trends in baseball? Why do numbers spike in certain periods of time? How else could this data be represented graphically?
• Louisville Slugger Museum - http://www.slugger.com/museum/
  This Flash-based website offers audio and images that share the heritage and traditions of the grand game f baseball. Of course there is discussion of the creation and evolution of the bat, but there is also much material on baseball itself. There's a virtual tour of the museum and the "ask us" and "trivia" sections cover such fun facts as "who were the first five men inducted into the hall of fame?" and "how many bats does a pro player use in a season?"
• The Science of Baseball - http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/
  This classic feature from the Exploratorium uses Shockwave-based simulations to take a look at the physics principles that are at play in the game of baseball, from the reaction time it takes to hit a 90 MPH fastball to what it takes to it a home run. There's a time machine, a look at women of the game and activities to help students study the bounce and movement of the ball. There's streaming video clips of interviews with ball players and all kinds of facts and trivia.
• Skills Clinic - http://www.webball.com/home.html?tips=home.html&tips=home.html&x=36&y=11
  WebBall presents this extensive collection of skills discussions from hitting and pitching to basic skills for youngsters and first-aid tips. If your students are really getting into your study of baseball, this site can help them take their enthusiasm out onto the field where they can improve their own skills. This sit is largely text-based and is best suited for upper elementary on up.

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