Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Off-Day Puzzle #18: Solution

Name the Dodger from some bling and seven numbers? What? Well, the first clue is the WORLD CHAMPION DODGERS 1988 ring. Second clue is the numbers on the fortune. Are those uniform numbers? The first result of a Google search under "1988 Dodgers uniform numbers" is this page at Baseball Almanac, which reveals:

    48 Ramon Martinez
    47 Jesse Orosco
    3 Steve Sax
    30 John Tudor
    55 Orel Hershiser
    49 Tim Belcher
    26 Alejandro Pena

What now? The first letters of the first names spell out RJSJOTA...nonsense...but the first letters of the last names spell out MOSTHBP. Most HBP? Most hit-by-pitches? On what team?

"The answer to this puzzle is a current position player for the Dodgers," reads the puzzle's text, so a quick trip to Baseball-Reference.com tells us Andre Ethier is the team leader in HBP and the answer to this puzzle.

Congratulations to solvers extraordinaire drewdez, LLCoolL, Ubragg, Mr. Customer, Keven C, Golem, QuadSevens, rbnlaw, Andrew, DunkHawk, Matt, fanerman, StolenMonkey86, and Dusty Baker. (Participation points go to Neeebs, MLASF, Josh S., Javier, Jesus (no screen name) and Karina).

Updated puzzle rankings to be posted soon. Up next: The season-ending grand-slam puzzle! More brain cells, more points! Be here 7 a.m. on Thursday, October 1!

10 comments:

BWrightson said...

Ahhhh devastating. I have had virtually no free time lately between work and school and I have plummeted down the list. I thought maybe I could solve this one quick while nobody was looking, but alas, I only got halfway there...

rbnlaw said...

Speaking of '88:
Happy birfday Tommy!

Josh S. said...

I still like my two alternate universe solutions.

Neeebs (The Original) said...

I missed Pena and Tudor. I shouldn't have figured out the numbers by memory.

But I'm with Josh. I like my alternative universe answer better than the answer you were looking for.

Steve K said...

The solution came to me as I was laying in bed this morning. For some reason, it didn't occur to me to use the '88 roster, even though the ring was in the pic. I kept looking at the current roster and had problems when some of the numbers didn't have a match.

And I guess I don't get any participation credit for commenting yesterday...

Orel said...

Not sure, J. Steve. We'll have to get a ruling by the PCS committee.

Orel said...

Good news: All puzzle-thread commenters receive participation credit.

Steve K said...

Thanks Orel, but I somehow don't think those 10 points are really going to push me into first!

Orel said...

Play for pride!

Kyle Baker said...

J. Steve needs a couple of points for being demented enough to wake up thinking about the solution. Now that's dedication.