I’m a product leader, designer, and developer with over twenty years of experience with tech companies of all types—from tiny startups to billion dollar unicorns. I’m the Executive Director of Design & Product Management for Sports Reference, LLC (I purposely avoided the word “currently” because I want to be here forever). We make Baseball Reference, Basketball Reference, Pro Football Reference, Hockey Reference, FBref, College Basketball Reference, College Football Reference, Stathead, Immaculate Grid, and Immaculate Footy. Previously, I was part of the product teams at ezCater, Dribbble, HubSpot, and PatientsLikeMe.
At Sports Reference, I get to combine my passion for building incredibly lovable and aggressively functional products with my love of sports (particularly baseball and soccer). In my free time, I’m a baseball researcher, SABR member, and Borussia Dortmund supporter.
I’ve been on Twitter since 2007 and cherish the connections I’ve made there. These days, I mostly tweet about baseball history at @baseballtwit. If you need to get in touch with me, my DMs are open. I also live-tweet Borussia Dortmund matches on my soccer account, @fussballtwit. Every once in a while, I check my original @adarowski account.
In case you’re looking for something a little more professional.
I love making things. Here are a few of my side projects.
An alternate Hall of Fame populated by a mathematical formula, I launched the Hall of Stats in 2012 with the help of my friends Jeffrey Chupp and Michael Berkowitz. At the end of 2023, I announced that I will no longer be updating the site (archived version).
The 25th Infantry Wreckers were an all-Black Army baseball team that rose to prominence in the years surrounding World War I due to a dominant roster that included Hall of Famer Wilber “Bullet” Rogan, Negro League stars Oscar “Heavy” Johnson and Walter “Dobie” Moore, and several other players who had careers in the Negro Leagues. I collected box scores for the team’s time in Hawaii and built this site to share (for the first time) their statistics.
Before Jackie Robinson re-broke the color line in 1947, there was an abundance of Black and Afro-Latino talent playing baseball outside of the American and National Leagues. These stars played not only in the Negro Leagues, but also in leagues all over the Western Hemisphere. This personal project collects stats for many of these stars, such as Silvio García, Lázaro Salazar, and Ramon Bragaña. I also collected stats for modern star Julio Franco (including 4,410 professional hits).
This podcast covers the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Era Committees. Guests have included Graham Womack, Jay Jaffe, Graig Kreindler, Mark Armour, Gary Ashwill, Scott Simkus, Kevin Johnson, Dave Metter, and more. I briefly hosted another podcast called The Outsider Baseball Notebook, which chronicled my journey learning about the Negro Leagues and pre-segregation baseball outside of the Negro Leagues.
Jorge Colón Delgado, official historican of the Puerto Rican Baseball League, reached out to me about helping him produce a webinar series about the relationship between Negro League stars and Puerto Rican baseball. The series has covered stars such as Josh Gibson and lesser known legends such as Francisco “Pancho” Coimbre. For this series, I act as moderator and I am lucky to be able to sit back and learn from Jorge and other panelists.
My exploration into the 25th Infantry Wreckers began as part of my research for my first contributions to the SABR Biography Project. So far, I have written biographies for Oscar “Heavy” Johnson, Walter “Dobie” Moore, Jesse “Hoss” Walker (co-written with Bill Staples Jr. for a book about the 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants), and Hurley McNair.
My friend and fellow researcher Graham Womack of Baseball Past and Present collected Hall of Fame Veterans Committee voting history (something that is notoriously difficult to find). I built this site to make it easier to navigate.
Many years ago, I played guitar and bass in local bands. In 2014, I started recording music again on my own. First came YAY!, a full-length album released in 2015. More recently, I’ve released Dobie & Heavy, a two-song EP about the subjects of my SABR biographies—Dobie Moore and Heavy Johnson.
I’ve been on several podcasts to discuss a variety of topics (such as our work at Sports Reference, Negro Leagues statistics, the Hall of Fame, and individual players). Want to chat? Reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn or you can email me at ad [at] sports-reference [dot] com.
1988 Topps Podcast, September 12, 2024
The BVB Pod, August 27, 2024
This Week in Baseball History, August 24, 2024
Ordinary Effort, August 12, 2024
Julio Franco with Adam Darowski
Pod of Fame, August 5, 2024
John Beckwith with Adam Darowski
Pod of Fame, February 12, 2024
Baseball Isn’t Boring, January 3, 2024
Not in Hall of Fame, December 31, 2023
Adrián Beltré with Adam Darowski
Pod of Fame, December 25, 2023
Immaculate Talk, September 29, 2023
Immaculate Talk, September 27, 2023
580 WCHS, July 27, 2023
This Week in Baseball History, July 18, 2023
SABRcast, July 17, 2023
Conversations with Sports Fans, May 25, 2023
The BVB Podcast, May 24, 2023
Rick Reuschel with Adam Darowski
Pod of Fame, April 10, 2023
Gene Tenace with Adam Darowski
Pod of Fame, January 2, 2023
For Your Reference, A Sports Reference Podcast, October 4, 2022
OOTPNow, September 9, 2022
Obscureball, June 1, 2022
Legends Sports, January 19, 2022
Cleveland’s Team. A Baseball History Podcast., January 14, 2022
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast, Decemeber 8, 2021
1988 Topps Podcast, December 6, 2021
Hey Buddy! Podcast, December 3, 2021
Bill Dahlen with Adam Darowski
Pod of Fame, November 29, 2021
Fangraphs Audio, November 24, 2021
Minnie Miñoso with Adam Darowski
Pod of Fame, November 22, 2021
South Side Sox, November 19, 2021
Sports Info Solutions Baseball Podcast, June 24, 2021
Baseball Beyond Batting Average, March 6, 2021
1988 Topps Podcast, February 28, 2021
Hey Buddy! Podcast, February 15, 2021
I am also available for speaking engagements about the work we’re doing at Sports Reference or any of my personal research topics.
My first Reddit AMA, February 20, 2024
Presentation at SABR 51 in Chicago, July 7, 2023
Presentation at SABR 51 in Chicago, July 6, 2023
Presentation for the Josh Gibson Foundation, June 3, 2023
Panel Discussion (with Dr. Raymond Doswell, Gary Ashwill, Larry Lester, and Dr. Adrian Burgos Jr.), February 22, 2022
Poster presentation at SABR 43 in Philadelphia, August 3, 2013
Brian Kenny invited me on MLB Now to discuss the Hall of Stats and a a piece I wrote for The Hardball Times about the Hall of Fame’s myth of exclusivity (that was nominated for a SABR Analytics Conference Research Award), February 12, 2016.