Home Run Derby

So I opened my mail last night … and there he was.

Bucky Dent.  Or if you’re from Red Sox Nation, Bucky F-ing Dent.

Well, at least a three and a half inch cardboard facsimile of him in near-Mint condition.

This is cool.  I like it.  But wait … WTF?

Dent showed up in a plain white envelope addressed with a computer-generated label … but no return address.  Postmarked from New York City on June 25th.  

Hmmmm.  NYC?  My first thought was that I had cheesed off some Yankee fan (who thought I was a Red Sox fan) in some post or another.  But that couldn’t be.  Because I haven’t written anything about the Yanks in a while – heck I haven’t posted at all in two weeks.  And besides, pissed off blog readers voice their displeasure immediately in the comments section – not via envelopes with mail-merged labels.

I bet other bloggers had Bucky Dent in their mailbox.  It had to be a publicity stunt.

I was right.

• Purple Row and Bronx Banter and Was Watching got a Dent card.  
• Dave Pinto at Baseball Musings and Rich Lederer at Baseball Analysts got George Scott cards.
• Will Carroll of ESPN got a Steve Swisher card. 
• Craig Calcaterra at Shysterball also got a Dent card … and led the charge to find out who else got them and who sent them.
  And to his credit – he figured it out.

It’s some viral marketing for a new book (I think it’s about about the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry) coming out from Josh Wilker, who runs the baseball card blog “Cardboard Gods.”

First of all, I’m honored to have been included in this list.   David Pinto, Will Carroll, Craig Calcaterra, and Richie Rich? 
Seriously – One of these things is not like the other.  One of these things just doesn’t belong.

Secondly, I love it when I get free swag as a result of this stupid website  – I now have seven books, two hats, and a baseball card. 
Even if the latest Beckett says a 1978 Bucky Dent is only worth 25 cents in Mint Condition.

Besides, this particular act of viral marketing thing is pretty cool.  It cost the publisher less than a dollar (44 cent stamp, 25 cent baseball card, 1 cent envelope) and the baseball blogosphere might get all a-Twitter about a book coming out by one of their blogging brethren.

It’s not like that Gatorade viral video of the ballgirl climbing an outfield wall to make a spectacular (but computer-generated) catch a year or two ago. 

By the way, I’m proud to say homerderby.com did not bite on that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 7:48 am and is filed under Baseball Cards, Books, Plugs, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.