The Geography of America's Pastime

Wrigley Field, Chicago 1930

GIS Research and Map Collection

Cubs or Cardinals? Mapping Baseball Fandom

The New York Times’ “The Upshot” is a Web page that analyzes politics, policy, and other subjects and creates visualizations based on various data.  The site created a map showing the predominant fans of Major League Baseball teams.  “Fans may not list which team they favor on the census, but millions of them do make their preferences public on Facebook.” 

Facebook created a map of baseball fans by county, but this new map was created using ZIP codes.  The interactive map of the United States allows users to see the most popular team in their local area and also view a table of the top three teams in each ZIP code.

The map creators also generated 14 maps of baseball’s biggest rivalries with proposed names for the borderlines.  Users can suggest new maps and names via Twitter or Facebook, and the maps will be regularly updated.