The Most Searched Baseball Player of 2011

Search engine Bing on Monday released its "most searched" data for numerous categories, from people to news stories. In a development that will surely make Baltimore Orioles hurler Jeremy Guthrie* happy, teen pop star Justin Bieber overtook Kim Kardashian as "The Most Searched Person of 2011."

*Jeremy, be honest, how many of those searches came from you?

But what about baseball? We're sure that you're curious about which baseball player generated the most search attempts on Bing. In a development that will surely make the first MLB Fan Caveman, Mike O'Hara, happy, the most searched baseball player this past year was New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. Not exactly surprising, huh? Jeter is arguably the sport's most popular player and has transcended baseball for much of the past generation. And '11 was a benchmark season for the Captain, who became the 28th player in MLB, and first in Yankees', history to reach 3,000 hits. Coming on a home run, no less.

While Guthrie and O'Hara are smiling today, though, we're a bit disappointed. We were secretly hoping that the honor would be bestowed upon the legend of Sam Fuld.