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

Whether you’re a baseball fan or not, there’s a lot to love about Ribbie, a markup website that turns real-time Major League Baseball (MLB) data into 8-bit broadcasts with animated arcade-style pixel art.

“I love the amount of data available to baseball fans […] “But when I try to follow a game using ESPN Gamecast, I find it kind of boring,” Ribbie’s creator, Eric Braunrot, told TechCrunch.

However, the Ribbie idea did not materialize until Brownrout created a pixel art image of Phillies player Kyle Schwarber to use as the logo for his fictional baseball team.

“I love the aesthetic, and I started thinking about ways I might be able to apply it to a data or visualization tool,” Braunrot said. “A quick Google search revealed MLB’s generic StatsAPI, and I realized I could theoretically recreate an entire baseball game in the same pixel format.”

Like many other tech workers in San Francisco, Braunrot now spent several nights experimenting with CloudCode. However, it stands out, because its tinkering resulted in something delightful.

“I used Claude Code and Codex extensively to turn a project that would have easily taken months into something I could build and launch in a few weekends,” he said. “I used Codex to build an image and animation creation workflow, and Claude Codex helped develop the web application. I’d never built a video game before, so this was new to me.”

Visiting Ribbie — an audio simulation of baseball’s RBI (hit in) stat — takes you to a living room with pixel graphics showing which MLB games are being played, and you can choose one to “watch” with Ribbie. (You can choose to zoom in and crop out the living room graphics, if you want something more practical.)

On mainstream play-by-play apps like ESPN’s Gamecast and MLB’s Gameday, the interface is very basic, displaying information clearly and without frills.

Ribbie prioritizes aesthetics instead, with unique artistic representations of each stadium and player. But it’s still simple enough to see the score of the game, as well as who’s pitching, hitting, or on base.

Since the data for all of these visuals comes from MLB’s own API, you can find most of the information you’re used to seeing on other apps, but it offers more of a play-by-play description. Brownrout recently added support for fantasy baseball, which allows people to add their rosters and track the players currently active in their games.

“I really like the aesthetic of the pixel-art mini-stadiums,” Braunrout said. “There’s something so satisfying about it that it’s hard to put your finger on it. I think it’s one of the reasons people are obsessed with games like Stardew Valley. It’s a whole pixel world in the palm of your hand.”

Sentimental projects like Ribbie feel refreshing because they’re not trying to take anything away from us, which is rare in a time when we’re accustomed to being tracked everywhere online. But can projects like Ribby’s survive? Is it inevitable that MLB lawyers will go after Rippie because the giant sports organization feels threatened by the ghost of Shohei Ohtani?

These are real risks, but Braunrot believes he has his bases covered (pun intended). He pointed to a legal case from 2007 in which a court ruled that baseball statistics are facts and therefore not subject to copyright. This allows fantasy baseball products to exist without MLB permission.

“The API is the same that powers fantasy baseball sites, third-party stats sites, and live game threads on Reddit […] “It has historically been used for all kinds of official and fan-created projects,” he said. “Ultimately, the project is completely free and non-commercial, and I try to make it very clear on the website that Ribbie is a non-affiliated fan project. It is a ‘love letter’ to baseball, not an attempt to compete with MLB.tv.”

Even though Brownout is very busy as the co-founder of AI SaaS platform Frigade, he still finds time to build Ribbie for the love of the game.

“I add sound effects and fuller animations to make it easier to passively follow while it’s running in the background,” he said. “My neighbors must think I’m crazy, because last night I was in my bedroom doing 100 Ball! Hit! Get Out!” on my iPhone to record Ribbie’s audio track.