By John Fragodt, Sports Reporter

Don’t miss out on football contest

It won’t be long before the Pope County Tribune starts its 8-week Football Contest and here’s an invitation to all our PCT readers to join the free contest this year.

All you have to do is find the football contest in each week’s paper (usually found on page 3B), pick out your 12 winners and include a tiebreaker score for the 12th game (just in case) and either mail or drop off the contest at the PCT office, or even easier, you can e-mail it to sports@pctribune.com

Yes, it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes and it doesn’t cost a thing.  The winner each week will receive $15 and the second-place winner earns $10.

We started the football contest last year, after I had run it in the Benson  paper for over 20 years, and I was a little disappointed with the number of entries.  This year, I hope more people take part, including student-athletes at Minnewaska Area High School.  Yes, if you can send an e-mail, you can enter the contest.  Just make sure to include your name and address.

Either way, we’ll be starting the 8-week football contest the first paper in September and I look forward to correcting all the entries every Sunday night to see who collects the $15 and $10 prizes each week.

Give it a try; you have nothing to lose.

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Offensive explosion in MLB

If you find baseball boring because of all the low-scoring games, you certainly enjoyed the games last Tuesday, July 18 when 12 teams had run totals in double digits for the first time since July 4, 1894.  Yes, that’s right; it was the first time in 129 years!

There were three games that ended 11-10, including San Francisco’s win over Cincinnati, the NY Mets’ victory over the Chicago White Sox and KC’s win over the Detroit Tigers.  Three games of 11-10 finishes had never ever occurred before in Major League Baseball.

Add in other games that ended 16-13, 17-3, 10-3 and 10-1, along with a 10-3 MN Twins’ victory and it tied with the second-most teams finishing with double-digit totals from a day in 1884.

In addition, the four games finishing with both teams in double-digits tied a record from 1894 and 1898.  

Last Tuesday night’s scoring explosion occurred with only 15 games being played, while when the record was set in 1894, there were 24 games played as every team played a doubleheader on July 4.