Afternoon Baseball

Jeff Reardon at Baseball-Reference.com

EDIT: Should have mentioned where to find the page view number. It's at the bottom-left corner of every player page, below the list of transactions and whatever else is down there. I think the update is at midnight, because, for instance, through Dec. 29 really means, "number of hits when Dec. 29 started."

It's a sad tale, and one hopes that he can be helped. At least he didn't really have a weapon when he pilfered the jewelry store, and maybe the medications he was on will provide an explanation of sorts.
But any publicity is good publicity, at least when it comes to website hits. His Baseball-Reference page had been viewed 52,000+ times before the story broke -- a number that shows people respect and know about his impressive career. (For comparision, Babe Ruth is at over 1 million, Derek Jeter 562,000, contemporary closer Tom Henke only 42,876.) That's 52,000+ over the lifetime of the site -- about 5-6 years, given the site started sometime in 2000, it appears.

In the last two days, over 17,000 hits have been registered at Reardon's Baseball-Reference page, for a total of 69,980 through Dec. 29. Nearly 25 percent of his lifetime page views in 2 days. I've certainly checked it about 10 times, so I'm partly to blame.