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!

Wrapping it up

Sorry for the long absence.

We have two contests to wrap up:

First, MMayes won the MLB Network hat by virtue of his guess of 138 runs scored on July 26th. There were actually 142 runs scored, so that's a good guess.

Also, Night Owl won the 1990 Upper Deck High # tournament, thanks to Nolan Ryan winning best card in the set. He wins the set.

I'm done with card blogging. I will be focusing on stat-based baseball blogging, primarily on the Baseball-Reference Blog. I will also be starting a personal stat blog and I'll let you know when that's up and running.

When is this card? 2008 Upper Deck Tim Lincecum #362

This Tim Lincecum card is easy to date. He's starting at home and there are ample matchups visible on the scoreboard. Here's the game in question, occurring on May 6th 2007.

Interesting notes on this:

• Second baseman Ray Durham is visible.
• The rightfielder, just slightly visible, is Randy Winn.
• The All-Star logo from 2007 in San Francisco is visible.
• This game was the 4th-worst start of Lincecum's career to date, as measured by game score. He went just 4.1 innings while giving up 5 earned runs, 5 hits, and 5 walks. The damage included homers by Ryan Howard and Shane Victorino.
  

ANAGRAM CONVERSATION

Tim Lincecum talking to Milt Pappas:

Milt Pappas = Slap Pap, Tim!
Tim Lincecum = Nice cum, Milt!


STAT

Lincecum is having a historically excellent start to his career. Among pitchers with at least 400 IP over their first 3 seasons, Lincecum ranks in the top 10 for best winning percentage, and that comes for playing for a middling Giants team.

Poll: The best card of 1990 Upper Deck High # Series

Here it is...the final poll to determine the best card of this set, as well as the winner of the set.

I'm skeptical about how Oil Can Boyd won his semifinal. If you are the reader attached to one of these final 5 cards, you might want to encourage all your friends to hit up this post and vote for your card, otherwise I fear that Boyd is going to win. (And I think we can all agree that his card is actually the worst of these 5...)

Online Surveys & Market Research

When is this card? 2007 Upper Deck Albert Pujols #443

I can't be entirely sure about the date of this photo, but it's almost certainly from this game on June 23, 2006. That's the only time that Pujols faced Justin Verlander (the pictured pitcher) that year and it came in Detroit. In the top of the 5th of that game, Pujols doubled to deep right field and was thrown out, I assume either trying to advance to third base or oversliding at second.

ANAGRAMS

Albert Pujols = Jabs polluters
Justin Verlander = Turns javelin red

BEST STAT

Total bases over the first eight years of a career--Number 1: Phat Albert

When is this card? 2007 Upper Deck David Dellucci #394

This one is easy to date. The top score is Oakland at San Francisco. Delluci played with the Phillies only in 2006. Dan Haren (#24) pitched just one game at the Giants that year (thanks to interleague play being so limited.) It was this game on June 24, 2006. The other game on the scoreboard is the Nationals (WAS) at the Orioles (BAL.)

Incidentally, the Jason Varitek card from the same set is from the same game, when Chris Coste was thrown out at home in the 9th inning.

ANAGRAM

David Delluci = Add lucid evil

(corrected)

David Dellucci = Civil clad dude

STAT

Ince 1969, Delluci has the fewest stolen bases in a season with at least 12 triples. That happened in his 1998 season with the Diamondbacks.

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.