Help My Buddy Stick It To Selig And Maybe Win $100 Too

Well, sorta. Here's the deal:

My best friend from college runs a very cool company that provides a very cool product. It's called Zvents, and it's in the business of telling you what you should be doing with your life. Seriously, go try it. It will change the way you approach your weekends. Actually, you may already be using Zvents without realizing it, because in addition to its own site, it powers event search for a network of hundreds of local newspaper sites including big ones like the Boston Globe, the Denver Post, and the Orange County Register.

For our purposes, it's important to note that Zvents doesn't just tell you when the next poetry slam or KT Tunstall concert is. It covers sporting events, specifically baseball, with instant info (and links, links, links) about more baseball stuff than you can possibly imagine. Even my hometown, Columbus, Ohio, which has nothing more than a pretty sorry AAA team to its credit is rife with baseball fun I wouldn't have even known about if it weren't for Zvents. I'm guessing the same applies to your hometown too.

But I'm not posting this to simply shill for my buddy's company. For one thing he won't pay me to do it, so screw him. I'm posting this to ask you for help. Here's the problem: Zvents likes to match up visuals with its listings, but Bud's lawyers won't let it put, say, the cartoon bird or the crimson hosiery or any other official team logo next to a listing for the Orioles-Red Sox game, for example. Copyrights, you know. The result are boring listings that look like this. To fix this, I'm running a contest on behalf of my buddy and his company with the goal of (a) gussying up its baseball listings; and (b) doing an end-around Selig's lawyers. Here's what to do:

Send me a photo that best represents your team's home ballpark and/or a photo that best represents your home team without prominently including the team’s logo. It could be a field action shot, a team photo, a uniform shot, a picture of the team name that doesn’t include the actual logo, whatever. Examples that spring to mind: the ivy -- or, I dunno, drunken Lincoln Park Trixies -- at Wrigley. Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. The McCovey cove at AT&T Park. General apathy at Rogers Centre. Adam Dunn eating a four way at Skyline. Something -- anything -- that defines your team and/or its stadium in a picture without actually showing the logo.

The only catches are (1) the photos must be 1MB or large JPG; and (2) must be taken yourself, not horked off the web. See, when my buddy's company gets sued, he always calls me for free legal advice and, frankly, I don't want to have to deal with it.

The winning photos for each team/venue will have the pride of placement as the official photo of the stadium venue, and as the official photo of the team “performer” on Zvents (the photo will also show up on the Zvents-affiliated papers too, which means your picture of the Green Monster, for example will be in the Globe whenever people search for Sox events). One grand prize for best overall photo will get $100 and a Zvents t-shirt, and one almost-grand prize will get a t-shirt. Here's a picture of my son in a Zvents cap. It's a pretty cool logo.

So that's the deal. You're all going to a game sometime soon, and you all have digital cameras. Take a quick snapshot that screams "This is the Essence of My Team and Its Stadium," send it in, and get a chance at $100 bucks and some low-level Internet fame. As the possessor of low-level Internet fame I can tell you that it won't get you any dates, but it is an awful lot of fun.

Final bonus: I may very well use the submitted photos as a means of ripping off Andrew Sullivan's The View From Your Window feature. Send me cool shots of your team and ballpark -- again, that you took -- and you'll be multitasking for the greater good.

Thanks in advance,

Craig