When is this card? 2007 Upper Deck Marcus Thames #114

This one was a little tough to figure out, mainly because even though this is a 2007 card, it turns out that the photo was from 2005. Thames himself would probably remember this himself since this looks like a pretty awesome catch. (At least, I assume he's about to catch the ball.)

My starting point for this card was the bottom right portion of the photo that features a game with a team starting with "H", which can only be "HOU" for the Astros. Roy Oswalt is #44 for them. The home team in that game starts with a letter that also has a leading vertical, and the name must take up less space than "HOU" since it starts further to the right. The only NL teams that fit this category are MIL, FLA, PIT, and PHI (and possibly LA if they used LA instead of LAD.)

So I looked through Roy Oswalt's starts, and then tried to match up to a #35 pitcher on one of those other teams. I found a 2006 game where he faced the Marlins' #35 Dontrelle Willis, but then I ran into a problem with the top part of the scoreboard. That game features either the Orioles ("BAL") or the Red Sox ("BOS") at home. On the day of that Oswalt/Willis game in 2006, there wasn't a #30 pitching for Baltimore or Boston.

So then I went back to 2005, and it was pretty easy to find the date: May 11th 2005. Hmm, but that's a Wednesday...unusual since the game featured on the Thames card is a day game. But the Tigers game that day (at the Rangers) was a day game, as was the Red Sox game.

ANAGRAMS

Marcus Thames = Rams mustache = Muscat harems

STAT

At the moment, Thames has by far the fewest career at-bats of any player with 100+ career homers. Of course, that's a bogus stat since he just hit his 100th career homer. But, he also has the fewest at-bats of any player with 95 to 105 career homers.