Playground →
Five of the top six neighbors in Javier Báez's similarity data are fellow athletes who shared a Cubs clubhouse — a tight formation that gives way to a second, looser cluster of Chicago-area sports teams and sportsbook brands.
The shape is two-peak. The first peak is dense and high-scoring: Anthony Rizzo (0.95), Chicago Cubs (0.94), Kyle Schwarber (0.93), Kris Bryant (0.93), Jake Arrieta (0.93), and David Ross (0.92) form a near-identical band — all Athletes or Sports Teams subcategories, all connected to the same franchise era. The similarity scores across these six span only 0.03, which is the narrowest clustering in the top 10. The second peak drops sharply: PointsBet Sportsbook (0.78) and Chicago Bears (0.75) represent a distinct neighborhood — one a sports-betting brand, one a cross-sport Chicago team. Below them, Joe Maddon (0.73), classified as a Professional rather than an Athlete, and Major League Baseball (0.73) round out the top 10. The gap between the first peak (0.92–0.95) and the second (0.73–0.78) is roughly 0.15 — a structural break that separates the Cubs-era core from the broader Chicago-and-baseball orbit.
The two-peak structure reveals an audience defined first by a specific team and era, and second by the wider Midwestern sports ecosystem those fans also inhabit.
