New contest: win a free relic card!

I'm back to run a contest to promote the Baseball-Reference.com Blog. I have been a contributor to that blog for over two years. Recently, Sean Forman (proprietor of Sports-Reference.com, which includes B-R as well as sites for the other major North American professional sports) unveiled a major upgrade to the Play Index, a searchable database tool that allows users to look up all sorts of amazing things. The blog is dedicated to showing and discussing those results. Any baseball would probably enjoy reading the blog, which has daily updates.

So, I'm running a contest to try to promote interest in the blog. This contest is totally free--you do not have to be a subscriber to the Baseball-Reference Play Index to participate. I am giving away cards to the top 4 finishers in a contest that runs from now until the end of the year, i.e. 11:59 PM ET on December 31, 2009. Those top 4 people will each get to choose one card from the 12 listed at the bottom of this post. See the nice pictures!

How do you earn points? It's easy. There are three ways:

• Every time you post a comment on the Baseball-Reference.com blog (on any post made from today through the end of the year--archived posts do not count) you get a point. Your comment must be directly related to the post and directly related to baseball. You can make multiple comments on the same post and get multiple points, but if it looks to me like you're just padding things out intentionally, I'll ignore your padded comments. To be eligible, you must make a comment on this blog right here saying what your username is on the B-R blog. That's how I'll know to keep a total of your comments.
  
• If you have your own baseball blog (team fan, stats, baseball cards, etc) and you post a link on your blog to this contest page, you get 5 bonus points added to your total. To be eligible, you must post your blog link in the comments on this post below.
• If you have any friends who like baseball and might want to read the Baseball-Reference.com blog but don't care about the baseball card contest, you can have their comments on the B-R blog count towards your total. All they need to do is post a comment on this blog below saying what their username is on the B-R blog, and who they want to give their points to.

That's it! Now here are the 12 cards from which the winners get to select:

• 2007 Topps AS TWH All-Star Stitches Trevor Hoffman
• 2009 Upper Deck SP Legendary Cuts GM-FP Carlton Fisk / Jorge Posada jersey
• 2009 Upper Deck O-Pee-Chee OPC-EFG Ellsbury / Figgins / Granderson triple jersey
• 2003 Upper Deck Sweet Spot NG1 Nomar Garciaparra jersey
  
• 2008 Upper Deck Goudey M-CY Chris Young jersey
• 2009 Upper Deck Series 1 GJ-KY Kevin Youkilis jersey
• 2005 Topps Bazooka BM-MT Mark Teixeira memorable moments jersey
• 2009 Upper Deck SP Legendary Cuts GM-RT Cal Ripken / Troy Tulowitzki jersey
• 2009 Upper Deck A Piece of History SS-AL Adam LaRoche jersey
• 2009 Upper Deck Series 1 GJ-JA Conor Jackson jersey
• 2002 Upper Deck Timeless Teams Jersey Card J-DE Dwight Evans jersey
• 2004 Topps Bazooka Blasts BB-AR Alex Rodriguez bat
  

So, remember--post your B-R username below, and start commenting over on the Baseball-Reference.com blog!