I Just Did Something Kind of Cool

Darin Ruf, is a Phillies prospect who earned MVP honors in the Eastern League this season. He played for the Reading Phillies, and just recently got called up to the big show.  It was a well deserved call up.

Ruf broke a pretty impressive record.  He broke Ryan Howard's home run record at AA Reading by hitting his 39th toward the end of the season.  This has effectively earned him the nickname "Babe Ruf."  That's some name to live up to.

Tonight, he got his first big league start in left field.  There is some question as to whether or not Ruf can play the outfield, since he is typically a first baseman.  There's a little issue named Ryan Howard that has first base occupied for many years to come, so first is out of the question.

Ruf had a few pinch hit appearances in the last few weeks, but up until tonight he hadn't gotten a hit.  In his first at bat tonight he got his first hit in a big way--by hitting a homer to left center field.

Oh yeah, on to the title of this post, about the cool thing I just did.  Well, I didn't know too much about Ruf so a few days ago I went on his baseball-reference.com site to see what I could find.  Much to my surprise this page wasn't sponsored (most of the Phillies players pages are sponsored by sabr.org, or there is no sponsor since the pages cost so much money).

I took a bit of a gamble and I decided to sponsor Darin Ruf's page for just $25 bucks.  I figured what the heck?  The worst thing that could happen is some publicity for the blog.  The best thing that could happen is that I am sponsoring the page of a future star player until the end of September next year.  It's a long shot, but at least I have the shot.

Here is a link to the page.  Ruf has a minor league page, but I scooped up his major league one.  My "ad" hasn't come up yet since it needs to be reviewed, but it should be up sometime tomorrow!