Mormon Baseball

Oakland As 2nd baseman and LDS Church member Eric Sogard finished behind the Mets’ David Wright in the final in MLB’s “Face of MLB” popularity contest. The twitter-based vote finished at 8am EST today and the results were announced on MLB Network’s Hot Stove at 9am.

The Face of MLB contest is basically an MLB promotional campaign to engage fans for the upcoming season. Each team nominates a player who then faces a player from another team in a day-long twitter vote. The winner advances to the next round in an elimination contest that ended with the final round that finished today.

Sogard led Wright for much of the day yesterday, and as of 6am EST he was still ahead 55% to 45%. But since many of Wright’s fans are in the Eastern time zone, the bulk of the last minute votes went to Wright and by 7:30 Wright had 50% of the vote.

Sogard, who became a second baseman for the Oakland As last year (and who currently tops the As depth chart at that position), has gained a cult following as one of the few MLB players to wear glasses, which fans have picked up on, using their fingers to put glasses on their own faces (they are called “rally specs” at crucial moments in the game. The glasses even have their own blog.