Whether you’re a baseball fan or not, there’s a lot to love Ribbya vibe-encoded website that converts real-time Major League Baseball (MLB) data into 8-bit arcade-style animated pixel broadcasts.
“I love how much data is available to baseball fans […] but when I try to watch a game with ESPN Gamecast, I find it kind of boring,” Ribbie creator Eric Brownrout he told TechCrunch.
However, the idea for Ribbie didn’t materialize until Brownrout created a pixel-art image of Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber to use as the fantasy baseball team’s logo.
“I love the aesthetic, and I started thinking about ways I could apply it to a data or visualization tool,” Brownrout said. “A quick Google search revealed MLB’s public StatsAPI, and I realized that I could theoretically recreate an entire baseball game in the same pixel format.”
Like many other tech workers in San Francisco, Brownrout has spent many nights experimenting with Claude Code. He stands out, though, because his weariness yielded something that is 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 create the image and sprite generation workflow, and Claude Code helped with web app development. I’ve never created a video game before, so this was a new one for me.”
Visiting Ribbie — a portmanteau of baseball’s RBI (hitting) stat — takes you to a pixel art lounge that shows which MLB games are being played, and you can pick one to “watch” with Ribbie. (You can choose to zoom in on the screen and crop the living room graphics if you want something more practical.)
In mainstream play-by-play apps like ESPN’s Gamecast and MLB’s Gameday, the interface is pretty basic, clearly displaying information without unnecessary cuts.
Ribbie prioritizes aesthetics, with unique pixel-art representations of each stage and player. But it’s still simple enough to see the score of the game, as well as who’s batting, batting or on base.
Because the data for all of these visuals comes from the MLB API, you can find most of the information you’d be used to seeing in other apps, but it makes for a more descriptive play-by-play. Brownrout recently added support for fantasy baseball, which allows people to add their rosters and track which players are currently active in their respective games.
“I just really like the aesthetic of the little pixel art stages,” Brownrout said. “There’s something so satisfying about it that it’s hard to put a finger on. I think it’s one of the reasons people are obsessed with games like Stardew Valley. It’s a whole world of pixels in the palm of your hand.”
Passionate projects like Ribbie feel refreshing because they don’t try to take anything away from us, a rarity in an age where we’re so immersed in being watched everywhere online. But can projects like Ribbie last? Is it inevitable that MLB’s lawyers will go after Ribbie because the mammoth sports organization feels threatened by a pixelized sprite of Shohei Ohtani?
These are real risks, but Brownrout believes he has his bases covered (pun intended). Referred to a court case since 2007 in which the court ruled that baseball statistics are facts and therefore not copyrightable. This allows fantasy baseball products to exist without MLB’s permission.
“The API is the same one that powers fantasy baseball sites, third-party stats sites, live game threads on Reddit […] So historically it’s been used for all types of official and fan-made works,” he said. “After all, the project is completely free and non-commercial, and I try to make it very clear on the site that Ribbie is an unaffiliated fan project. It’s a ‘love letter’ to baseball, not something that’s trying to compete with MLB.tv.”
Although Brownout is quite busy as the co-founder of the AI SaaS platform Frigade, he still finds time to create Ribbie for the love of the game.
“I’m adding sound effects and fuller animations to make it easier to passively watch while it’s active in the background,” he said. “My neighbors must think I’m crazy because last night I was in my bedroom taking 100 pictures of ‘Ball! Strike! Out!’ on my iPhone to record for the Ribbie audio track.
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