Congratulations to ams258, the winner of the Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest for April! If the scores look higher than expected it's because the monthly scoreboard was *not* up-to-date, even though I kept insisting that it was. I *thought* it was, but only found out afterwards that the scoreboard was inaccurate. However, the scoring has been corrected and now all scoreboards should reflect the correct scores. This includes both the monthly scoreboard as well as the individual game scores. So, you can now check on your scores after each game as well as view the aggregate scores for the current month. You can go back and check scores for previous games, too, and they should all be correct as well.

So, I apologize for the confusion and the erratic scoring to this point. There were a few growing pains, but I think we have hammered out all of the major bugs and, now that most people are familiar with how the whole thing works, the May contest should run much more smoothly.

For those of you who are new to the site or who still don't know what the deal is, all of the information about the contest can be found in the left sidebar under "AA SWAG CONTEST". There you will find a link to the current game, the current month's scoreboard, and the contest rules. If you have any questions about the contest I ask that you read over the rules first. If anything is still unclear after reading them then by all means fire away.

For winning the April contest, ams258 claimed -- among several options -- the 1986 Mets World Series DVD Set, which is a nine-disc collection featuring Game 6 of the NLCS against the Astros and all seven World Series games against the Red Sox. These are the full television broadcasts of the games, not abridged highlights or NFL Films-style recaps. There is also a bonus disc with modern day interviews with many of the participants of that World Series. Definitely a neat set, and a must-own for any Met fan.

Having won a month, ams258 is not eligible to win another monthly contest this season. If the Mets are fortunate enough to make the postseason we will have some sort of playoff contest, so he would be eligible for any prizes there. Also, there's a chance to win a prize every single game for racking up a perfect 100 on that day's contest, so he (or any other monthly winner) could still cash in there. It's not easy to score perfectly; you have to get all five questions right, including nailing the pitcher's game score right on the nose. However, this is a neat way for past winners to keep playing and for folks who missed a few games or joined the monthly contest too late to participate and still win a prize even if they are too far behind to win the monthly contest.

Here are the top ten scores for the month of April:

The full April scoreboard can be found here. Some of the scores vary slightly because I have manually reconciled duplicate entries for folks who accidentally filled in forms with the same username but different e-mail addresses. The April scoreboard doesn't always reflect that. I can't promise that I will do this every month, so make it a point to fill in the same username and e-mail address every time and you'll have nothing to worry about.

I want to thank everyone who participated for making the first month of the contest a big success. I think we all had a lot of fun, and hopefully it made the games and the game chatters here a little more interesting. Here's to more fun and even more participation this month.