While researching something Sunday evening, I found myself digging through the BP archives. I noticed above Joe Sheehan's byline and discussion of young pitchers that the article ID was 3333.

My baseball number was 33. I caught in junior high and a girl - Lynda Jones, who I remember for her scent and her parents' poor spelling - pointed out that the number I wore - 3 - couldn't be seen well when I wore the catcher's gear. I wore number 3 because ... well, no real reason. It was my number in hockey and I started playing hockey too young to think about silly things like numbers. I just repeated the number, putting it safely on each side of the strap and safely in view of junior high girls.

None of that's important, especially now that I'm no longer a junior high boy. It's just that the ID caught my eye. The BP article IDs mean nothing. They're a simple counting system. Each new article gets a new number, in sequence. In that, they tell their own story, much in the same way that BP itself has gone inside the numbers.
Noticing the numbers made me wonder what some other numbers might look like and if it would tell some story of BP. As the authors put together the 10th annual edition of the book, I'm pretty sure that the story of BP would make an interesting tale on its own. Gary, Rany, and Clay were among the first to come together, yet it was only last summer when Gary and Rany met. Amazing world, isn't it?

It started on the web, apparently, some time in 1997. I know there were more articles before this. A few early articles are improbably bylined to Chaim Bloom. I think Chaim was in junior high back in 1997. I don't know Gregg Pearlman, but it's nice to see that article number one addressed sac bunts, bad decisions by Dusty Baker, and ridiculing general managers. James Click's great study on bunting has some DNA here.

Article 50 is one of the longest running features on BP - Transaction Analysis by Chris Kahrl. Maybe this was the first time that Chris took shots at Brad Ausmus, but probably not. The format still works.

It was almost a year between #1 and #50, but just three months before Chris pumped out another TA. Ahh, the good old days of Rafael Belliard. Chris also penned #200, a preview of the Cubs-Braves series. Damnit, Chris was right as the Cubs went down in defeat.

Jumping forward to #500 brings us a bullpen article by Rany from March 2000. Another 500 passed in a year, bringing the Free Erubiel Durazo campaign to the world.

Quick note here to notice the pace of the articles. One thousand articles in three years. That's an amazing pace by a team of writers. BP had gone from a tiny publication to an internet sensation while those thousand articles were written. Keith Law went from a writer for a web site to a place in the front office of a Major League team. Writers made their names and somewhere, writers dreamed of being BP quality.

It didn't take three years to write the next 500 articles; That milestone went to Jonah Keri's analysis of the free agent market. The following century-based milestone went to Doug Pappas. He followed the near-miss strike like only he could and reading it reminds me of what made him so great and makes him so missed.

#1700 went to ... well, me. Yes, somewhere in the middle of the 1600's, BP went Premium and UTK went to BP. It was only June 2003 when the IDometer rolled over to 2000. Joe Sheehan took on the Braves.

So let's look again - three years for the first 500 articles, then just a year to go from 1500 to 2000. It only speeds up. Gary Huckabay pumped out #2500 in January 2004. It seems that, you know, paying the authors has a quantitative effect on them. It was another six months before the next 500 went by, ending with Jonah Keri again in another variation on the theme of beer and tacos.

The speed continued as one of the newest BP authors, Steven Goldman, rang up #3500 in late September 2004. We find BP at #3654 as of now, certainly a long way from that Gregg Pearlman piece and certainly ... well, you be the judge.

You've come a long way, BP. Inside the numbers of an organization that looks inside the numbers is an exercise that perhaps gives some insight into the evolution of analysis. If nothing else, it's fun to flip through the archives, taking a random walk down Ball Street.