In honor of the opening week of baseball season we present: a two-day baseball spectacular!
We've scanned last week's top 50,000 Web user queries for baseball-related terms. Today we feature the 50 most-requested baseball terms overall; tomorrow we'll talk about the top 20 players in particular. (One note on today's list: in order to avoid cluttering it with too many team names, we've ranked only the eight teams that made last year's playoffs.)
Without further ado, let's look at that top 50:
Baseball
Fantasy baseball
Jackie Robinson
Babe Ruth
Atlanta Braves
New York Yankees
Houston Astros
John Rocker
Boston Red Sox
Texas Rangers
Cleveland Indians
New York Mets
Baseball caps
Derek Jeter
Little League
Baseball equipment
Baseball Weekly
Mark McGwire
Hank Aaron
Sammy Sosa
High school baseball
College baseball
Ken Griffey, Jr.
Yankee Stadium
Joe DiMaggio
Baseball stats
Roberto Clemente
Mike Piazza
Chipper Jones
Baseball bats
Negro Leagues
Baseball cleats
Wrigley Field
Willie Mays
Baseball gloves
Minor league baseball
Mickey Mantle
Baseball stadiums
Arizona Diamondbacks
Baseball camps
Satchel Paige
Baseball jerseys
Lou Gehrig
Fenway Park
Japanese baseball
Pedro Martinez
Baseball uniforms
Casey At the Bat
Baseball card price guide
Alex Rodriguez
Go Jackie Robinson! (More about Jackie and the Babe tomorrow.)
Next question: where are all the searches for baseball cards? Aren't they supposed to be a hot-ticket item? Our logs show searches for basketball cards and even hockey cards (?) but few for baseball cards. How can that be? Or are all those people already over at auctions, offering $350 for a 1960 Mickey Mantle?
Meanwhile, fantasy baseball continues to boom -- and in fact, it appears to be the most popular of all fantasy sports. Hardly anybody calls it "rotisserie" baseball anymore, it seems; 97% of searchers called it fantasy, 3% rotisserie.
Baseball and fantasy baseball got the most searches by a large margin, by the way: about 40% of all baseball queries were for one of those two terms.
Finally, note the "Yankee Connection": of these top 50 terms, 7 have a connection to the century's dominant team: Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Yankee Stadium, Derek Jeter, New York Yankees, and Babe Ruth.
Tomorrow: the players.
