They’re indelible All-Star snaps, Midsummer memories of a storied sport: a boyish Ted Williams clapping for joy after his walk-off home run in Detroit; a triumphant Tony Gwynn securing the winning run in Pittsburgh; a portly Cal Ripken Jr. hitting a home run at his All-Star farewell in Seattle.
These Hall of Famers—like Stan Musial, Derek Jeter, and so many other greats—had something in common: With the exception of the All-Star Game, they never changed teams. This unique identity gives their stars added glamor but largely keeps them away from a new game sweeping the baseball landscape.
The name is Immaculate Grid, and with apologies to the rising Atlanta Braves — who were eight-time National League team nominees at Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Seattle — it’s the hottest thing in the sport.
The Grid — named for the flawless inning in which a pitcher knocks out the side on nine pitches — is a daily quiz in the form of a tic-tac-toe board designed by Brian Minter, a software engineer in suburban Atlanta . He said the game averages about 200,000 players each weekday.
“I thought it was one of those niche games with a small following,” Minter said in a phone interview. “But not like this.”
Players are only allowed nine guesses to fill in the nine boxes of answers corresponding to the categories listed above and below left. Most of these categories are teams. So the correct answers are everyone who played for the franchises listed above and next to each box.
As far as online brain teasers go, it’s a perfect match for Baseball Reference, which the site bought Tuesday for an undisclosed sum. It’s also a win for well-travelled former top players from around the world.
“I love it,” said Mike Cameron, the former outfielder who coached at Seattle’s Futures Game on Saturday and played for eight teams in 17 seasons. “I think of all the guys I’ve played against and my mind starts to spin. I’ve played every team in every division and I’ve had a lot of teammates from the start. For the first few years I just sat on the bench and watched, so I know a lot of these guys.”
Todd Greene, a former six-team catcher from 1996 to 2006, plays every day and compares the starting lineup to his two sons and son-in-law. He took advantage of himself twice, saying he jokingly berated his family members for not doing it.
“I’m trying to fill it with backup catchers from my time,” Greene said. “We all jumped around a bit. At first I was just trying to get all nine answers, but now I’m taking my time.”
Minter, 29, had seen similar games online but wanted to see if he could create an automated grid using a new JavaScript framework and a different hosting provider. It worked and gave players an instant rush whenever a correct answer appeared in the grid in the form of a headshot of the player. Until Tuesday, mostly only prominent players had real photos, giving their careers an unofficial status symbol.
“It’s like, you played, but let’s not get too excited,” said CJ Nitkowski, a former eight-team substitute, who turned his blank headshot into his Twitter profile picture. “But our time has come for people who know.”
After being sold to Baseball Reference, almost every player now has an actual headshot that matches the headshot listed at the top of their stats page on the site when selected in the grid. The new host also features a full list of all possible answers for each square, but otherwise the game has the clean, simple setup Minter has been using since he launched it this spring.
“The main goal is not to screw it up,” said Sean Forman, president of Sports Reference, Baseball Reference’s parent company and custodian of statistical data for several sports. “It’s incredibly rare for a product to resonate so well with our audience so quickly. We want to expand it on our other sites – basketball and soccer goes without saying – and we’re trying to launch those as soon as possible.”
Forman became aware of Minter’s website earlier this season when traffic to Baseball Reference’s “multi-franchise” tool skyrocketed.
“Two months ago there was almost no traffic,” Forman said, “and now it’s one of the top five most visited pages every day.”
This could mean that some users are cheating, but most players are tripping up somewhere; Tuesday’s average score — in a one-off afternoon bonus grid — was 6.9 out of 9. Minter said he realized last month that adding a rarity rating (the lower the better) would tempt players to go after if possible unclear answers only complete the grid.
The site instantly calculates how popular each reply was that day. For example, as of late Tuesday afternoon, 50 percent of users had opted for Gerrit Cole, Tuesday’s American League starting pitcher, for the Astros/Yankees field, but only 0.01 percent of users had opted for Nitkowski, who played a season for Houston played two seasons and months for the Yankees.
The sum of the nine answers – plus a 100-point penalty for a missed box – gives the rarity value.
“The other side of the rarity score is, instead of trying to get the worst guy in every place, can you get whoever is the most popular instead?” said Nitkowski. “I think it’s fun both ways.”
If the All-Star Game is a showcase for baseball’s best, the rarest Immaculate Grid plaques represent the opposite: places honoring the more random names among the approximately 23,000 players who have ever played in the majors have.
“It gives you an opportunity to remember players that you haven’t given much thought to,” Minter said. “As for the Astros/Yankees, Gerrit Cole immediately came to mind. But it’s fun to think about these older players. It gives you a sense of nostalgia and a reason to flip through those mental baseball cards.”