The core of The Baseball Nexus is the reference area containing year-by-year statistical totals for every player who's ever played in major league baseball (as a random example, take a look at the career of this guy named Babe Ruth).

Near the top of each page you'll see links for each Major League Baseball team (yes, even the Tampa Bay Rays are considered a major league team). Click on any of these links and you'll see a page giving information about each season for that team.

Click on a season and you get a list of all the players from that year's team (the 1927 Yankees seem to get a lot of press, let's see why). Click on a player's name to view statistical summaries for each season he played in the majors (he "may have had a tough break", but there's a lot to like about the career statistics of Lou Gehrig).

In addition to the "raw" numbers, animated graphics are use on team and player pages to present certain data in more "user-friendly" ways.

The Baseball Nexus uses graphical methods of presenting MLB player and team information. A package called PHP/SWF Charts is used on the site to generate "Flash-y" graphs and charts. Very, very cool.

So now it's much easier to see the career progression of Lou Gehrig's total bases and OPS and, of course, all the rest of the batters. For pitchers, charts show ERA and WHIP ("walks + hits per inning pitched): see the Nolan Ryan page for an example. Team pages include graphs of wins and attendance, such as those you'll find on the Boston Red Sox history page (and all the other franchises, too). All with some motion added just for the "ooh" factor.

Modern day sports stars are often as well known for the size of their salaries as they are for their statistics. The Baseball Nexus now includes salary data for players in major league baseball (sorry, only available back to 1985). So now when you visit the Barry Bonds page, you can see how close he came to becoming the first player to break the $200 million career earnings mark. Or you can think about asking Derek Jeter what he does with his annual salary increases of about $1 million.

Lists of top annual salaries are also available for browsing, so you can be the first in your neighborhood to know that George Foster had MLB's top salary in 1986. A little less surprising is Alex Rodriguez's position on the 2007 salary list. You may also be interested in seeing the list of the all-time top annual major league baseball annual salaries.

Birth dates, dates of deaths, dates of first Major League games and dates of final games are obvious milestones that may be of interest to visitors to a site like The Baseball Statistics Nexus. As an enhancement to the site's main page, lists of players celebrating those milestones are presented for the current date. The main page includes a max of 10 of each "celebrant", with a link to a page containing complete lists for that month + day combination.

The site also includes "This Day In Baseball History" pages for every day of the year. Just out of curiosity it's interesting to be able to have a quick reference to find out who was born on the same day as you, etc. Not the most useful of information for a researcher, but sometimes it's just about entertainment.

The Baseball Nexus includes sections containing results of the World Series, league championship series and league divisional series. So if you can't remember who won the American League Championship Series (ALCS) in 1996 or the National League Championship Series (NLCS) in 1985, well, now you know where to go.

The divisional series (first round of the playoffs) have only been around since the last MLB realignment in 1995, but they've added the short history of the ALDS and NLDS, too.

If you asked any major league baseball player about goals for their career, the two you'd most often hear would probably be "win a World Series" and "get into the Hall of Fame". As of 2008, 286 players, managers, executives, "pioneers" and even a few umpires have been given the honor of induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Every year the members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) have the opportunity to vote for recently retired players (the definition of "recently retired" has occasionally changed - at this writing it means their final game was between 5 and 20 years ago). If a player is named on 75% of submitted ballots, they're in.

There's also a "Veterans Committee" that considers players from over 20 years ago. This group is also responsible for selecting managers, umpires and baseball executives. The rules for these selections are the most flexible throughout the Hall's history, see the Hall of Fame's web site for all the gory details.

And see the Hall of Fame page at The Baseball Nexus for a full list of players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

It's not done quite as dramatically as the Oscars, but Major League Baseball does announce its own awards over the week or two following the end of the World Series. Obviously, The Baseball Nexus wouldn't be much of a reference site without lists of winners of MLB's major annual awards.

Some form of "Most Valuable Player" award has been named since the 1920's. Check out the list of MVP's from both the American and National Leagues at TheBaseballNexus.com. (Wondering how Babe Ruth only won once? Prior to 1930 a player could only win once.)

Since 1956 the year's top pitcher (or pitchers) have been given the Cy Young award. Since 1967 there's been a winner in each league. Similarly, since 1947 the top newcomers to the major leagues have received the "Rookie of the Year" honor.

The player information pages at The Baseball Nexus now includes all-time rankings in major statistical categories. For example, you can see that George Brett currently ranks 15th all-time in hits and #5 in intentional walks. Or find out that 32 years after retiring, Frank Robinson is still hanging on to the #7 spot in career home runs.

Lists of career leaders, such as the all-time Major League home run hitters, career hit leaders and career stolen base leaders are also available for browsing.