Ribbie turns real-time MLB data into pixel-art broadcasts

San Francisco-based developer Eric Brownrout has launched Ribbie, a website that transforms real-time Major League Baseball (MLB) data into 8-bit broadcasts featuring animated pixel art. The name Ribbie is a play on the baseball statistic RBI, which stands for runs batted in. The project offers an alternative to mainstream play-by-play applications like ESPN Gamecast and MLB Gameday, which display game information in a standard, text-heavy format. Brownrout, who is also the co-founder of the AI SaaS platform Frigade, created the tool after seeking a more visually engaging way to follow live games.

To build the application, Brownrout relied heavily on modern artificial intelligence tools. He used Codex to construct the image- and sprite-generation workflow, while Claude Code assisted with the web application development. “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,” said Eric Brownrout, the creator of Ribbie. The developer, who had never built a video game before, realized he could theoretically recreate an entire baseball game in a pixel format after experimenting with the tools.

Because Ribbie relies on real-time sports data, it operates within a complex legal landscape. Is it inevitable that the MLB’s lawyers will come after Ribbie because the mammoth sports organization feels threatened by a pixelized sprite of Shohei Ohtani? Brownrout believes the project is legally protected, pointing to a 2007 court ruling which established that baseball statistics are facts and are therefore not copyrightable. This legal precedent allows fantasy baseball—a game in which participants act as owners to build a team that competes against other fantasy owners based on the statistics generated by real-life MLB players—to operate without requiring explicit permission from the MLB. Brownrout noted that the public MLB StatsAPI he uses is the same one that powers fantasy baseball websites, third-party statistics platforms, and live game threads on Reddit.

Currently, Ribbie is a completely free, non-commercial fan project designed as a “love letter” to baseball rather than a commercial competitor to official streaming services. However, Brownrout continues to update the platform. He is working on adding sound effects and fuller animations to make it easier for users to passively follow games in the background. This process has involved recording custom audio tracks, with Brownrout completing 100 takes of baseball calls on his phone to build the system’s sound library.

Why it matters

Ribbie demonstrates how accessible public sports APIs, combined with modern AI coding tools, allow individual developers to build sophisticated, niche visualization projects without commercial overhead.