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Ribbie turns real-time baseball stats into arcade-like, pixel-art broadcasts

28 d ago

Eric Brownrout, a San Francisco-based tech worker and co-founder of AI SaaS platform Frigade, created Ribbie, a website that transforms real-time Major League Baseball (MLB) data into 8-bit broadcasts with arcade-style, animated pixel art. The idea emerged after Brownrout generated a pixel-art image of Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber for his fantasy baseball team’s logo. Inspired by the aesthetic, he discovered the MLB public StatsAPI and realized he could recreate entire games in pixel format. Using AI tools Claude Code and Codex, Brownrout turned what would have been a months-long project into one built and launched in a few weekends. Ribbie (an onomatopoeia of RBI, runs batted in) presents a pixel-art living room interface showing ongoing MLB games. Users select a game to “watch” on a retro-styled screen, with unique pixel-art representations of every stadium and player. Unlike mainstream apps like ESPN Gamecast or MLB Gameday, which prioritize basic information display, Ribbie emphasizes aesthetics while still providing scores, pitchers, batters, and base runners. The data comes from the MLB API, offering descriptive play-by-play. Brownrout recently added fantasy baseball support, allowing users to track their rosters. Concerns about MLB legal action are addressed: Brownrout notes a 2007 court ruling that baseball stats are facts and not copyrightable, supporting fantasy baseball and third-party projects. The API already powers official and fan-created sites. Ribbie is free, non-commercial, and clearly labeled as an unaffiliated fan project—a “love letter” to baseball, not a competitor to MLB.tv. Despite his busy schedule, Brownrout continues enhancing Ribbie with sound effects and fuller animations, even recording audio tracks like “Ball! Strike! Out!” at home. The project exemplifies a refreshing, non-extractive passion in an era of widespread online tracking.