The Amazin' Avenue "R.A. Dickey Face" Contest

When the story of the 2010 Mets is written, the chapter on R.A. Dickey will be one of the few must-reads. His pitching has been great, sure, and his bat has been surprisingly potent, especially during a season where the team regularly struggled to score more than a few runs. What's more, the Dickey headline puns were a seemingly endless source of material for us, and when they finally ran their course, we still had the "Dickey face", which is the gift that keeps on giving.

And so it continues to give, in the form of a $100 gift card to MLB.com courtesy of State Farm, who is promoting its Go-To-Bat online home run derby game to benefit charity. Check it out here. You can read more about it at the bottom of this post.

The Contest

Simple: Create the best R.A. Dickey PhotoShop/MS Paint/whatever image. Think you've got the skills? Time to prove it. We will select our five favorite Dickey image FanShots and the Amazin' Avenue community will select a winner.

The Rules

You can read the official rules here, but this is the gist:

1. You must use one of the following images as the "Dickey" part of the entry. These images are licensed for use only for this contest and exclusively on Amazin' Avenue. That means you can't use them for anything else and you can't post them on other websites. If you use a Dickey photo other than one provided here your entry will not count. I can't be any clearer than that.
2. The rest of the entry image can come from wherever you want -- screen capture, movie poster, etc. -- so long as you don't use anyone else's professional photography. That means no paparazzi or professional sports photos.
3. Your entry must be a FanShot. You can read more about posting FanShots here.
4. Since FanShots reduce the image size to fit web standards, you must include a link to the full-size image in the FanShot itself or in the FanShot comments. You can utilize a free image-hosting service like Flickr or Photobucket to upload the full-size photo and link to it from your FanShot.
5. If you have previously posted a Dickey FanShot you can resubmit it using one of the Dickey photos provided below.
6. Only one entry per person will be accepted, so if you have several ideas just choose the best one. If you submit multiple entries we will just use your first one.

The Images

Per the rules above, one of the following three licensed R.A. Dickey images must be used in your entry. Click the link to view and download each full-size image.

Image #1 (Facing left, 1.4 MB)
Image #2 (Facing right, 901 KB)
Image #3 (Facing forward, 2 MB)

You can also download the three images in one .zip file (4.2 MB)

Ready... Set... Dickey!

The contest is live now and will run until 5pm EDT next Wednesday, September 15, 2010. The community voting will be held from the 20th through the 22nd. So get to it!

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The following is provided by State Farm, the sponsor of this contest.

State Farm has teamed up with MLB to give people a chance to attend the 2010 World Series, while making a difference for their favorite charity by "going to bat" for them!

It’s easy to do - Fans just visit www.statefarm.com/gotobat, play the online Home Run Derby game for the charity they would like to "go to bat" for and once a week, for ten weeks, State Farm will select a winner and their charity. The winner’s charity will receive a weekly donation ($100 for every home run hit that week in MLB) and the winner themselves will receive a trip for two the 2010 World Series.