About Sean

Sean Lahman is an award-winning database journalist and author. 

He develops interactive databases and data driven stories for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and other Gannett newspapers and websites. He also writes a weekly column on emerging technology and innovation.

Prior to joining the Democrat and Chronicle, he was a reporter and columnist with the New York Sun.

Lahman has broken new ground in the field of sports statistics, creating historical databases for use in both print and digital projects. His work spans the spectrum of sport — baseball, pro and college football, pro and college basketball, auto racing, tennis, boxing and the Olympic games. His Baseball Archive web site was one of the earliest sources for baseball information on the Internet, and he headed the first significant effort to make a database of baseball statistics freely available to the general public. Lahman also contributed to pioneering efforts at web sites like Baseball-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, and BasketballReference.com.

He has written for or edited a number of books, including the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, Total Baseball and Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia.  His 2008 book, The Pro Football Historical Abstract, won the Nelson Ross Award,  presented annually by the Pro Football Researchers Association for “outstanding achievement in pro football research and historiography.

Lahman is an occasional lecturer and panelist on the subjects of big data and the open source movement.