They are indelible All-Star snapshots, midsummer recollections for a sport steeped in custom: a boyish Ted Williams clapping in delight after his walk-off homer in Detroit; a triumphant Tony Gwynn sliding in for the successful run in Pittsburgh; a stately Cal Ripken Jr. blasting a homer in his All-Star farewell in Seattle.

Those Hall of Famers — like Stan Musial, Derek Jeter and so many different greats — had one thing in frequent: Except for the All-Star Game, they by no means modified groups. That singular identification provides their stars additional glimmer, however largely removes them from a brand new sport sweeping the baseball panorama.

The title is Immaculate Grid, and with apologies to the surging Atlanta Braves — who had eight picks for the National League’s group in Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Seattle — it’s the most well liked factor going within the sport.

The grid — named for the immaculate inning, through which a pitcher strikes out the aspect on 9 pitches — is a every day quiz within the type of a tic-tac-toe board designed by Brian Minter, a software program developer in suburban Atlanta. He mentioned the sport averages about 200,000 gamers each weekday.

“I thought it would be one of those niche games with a small following,” Minter mentioned in a telephone interview. “But not like this.”

Players are permitted simply 9 guesses to fill the 9 containers with solutions that correspond to classes listed throughout the highest and down the left aspect. Most of these classes are groups, so appropriate solutions are anyone who performed for the franchises listed atop and beside every sq..

As on-line mind teasers go, it’s a good match for Baseball Reference, which purchased the positioning on Tuesday for an undisclosed sum. It can also be a victory for well-traveled former large leaguers in every single place.

“I love it,” mentioned Mike Cameron, the previous outfielder who coached within the Futures Game in Seattle on Saturday and performed for eight groups throughout 17 seasons. “I think of all the guys I played against and my mind starts to turn. I played in every division against every team, and I had a lot of teammates from the start. My first couple of years, all I did was sit on the bench and watch, so I know a lot of those guys.”

Todd Greene, a former catcher for six groups from 1996 via 2006, performs each day, evaluating grids together with his two sons and son-in-law. He has used himself twice, and mentioned he playfully scolded his members of the family for not doing so.

“I try to fill it with backup catchers from when I played,” Greene mentioned. “We all bounced around a little bit. At first I was just trying to get all nine answers, but now I take more time.”

Minter, 29, had seen related video games on-line, however needed to see if he might make an automatic grid through the use of a brand new JavaScript framework and a special internet hosting supplier. It labored, giving gamers an instantaneous rush when an accurate reply pops into the grid within the type of the participant’s headshot. Until Tuesday, solely distinguished gamers tended to have precise photographs, conferring an unofficial standing image on their careers.

“It’s like: You played, but let’s not get too excited,” mentioned C.J. Nitkowski, a former reliever for eight groups, who turned his clean headshot into his Twitter profile image. “But our time has come, for people who know.”

After the sale to Baseball Reference, virtually each participant now has an precise headshot that matches the one atop their statistics web page on the web site when chosen within the grid. The new host additionally presents a whole record of all attainable solutions for every field, however in any other case the sport has the clear, easy setup that Minter has used since he began it this spring.

“The main goal is not to mess it up,” mentioned Sean Forman, the president of Sports Reference, the mum or dad firm of Baseball Reference and the keepers of statistical knowledge for a number of sports activities. “It’s incredibly rare to have a product that fits with our audience so well, so quickly. We want to build it out on our other sites — basketball and football are no-brainers — and we’re trying to launch those as soon as possible.”

Forman seen Minter’s web site earlier this season, when guests to Baseball Reference’s “multi-franchise” instrument exploded.

“It was getting almost no traffic two months ago,” Forman mentioned, “and now it’s one of the top five visited pages every day.”

That might indicate that some customers cheat, but most gamers do stumble someplace; the typical rating on Tuesday — in a one-time afternoon bonus grid — was 6.9 out of 9. Minter mentioned he realized final month that including a rarity rating (the decrease the higher) would entice gamers to hunt probably the most obscure solutions attainable as a substitute of merely finishing the grid.

The web site instantly calculates how well-liked every reply has been that day. By late afternoon on Tuesday, for instance, 50 % of customers had picked Gerrit Cole, the American League’s beginning pitcher Tuesday, for the Astros/Yankees sq., however solely 0.01 % of customers had chosen Nitkowski, who performed one season for Houston and two months for the Yankees.

The sum whole of the 9 solutions — with a 100-point penalty for a missed field — creates the rarity rating.

“The other side of the rarity score is, instead of trying to get the worst guy in every spot, can you get the one who’s most popular?” Nitkowski mentioned. “I think it’s fun both ways.”

If the All-Star Game is a showcase for baseball’s greatest, then the rarest Immaculate Grid boards signify the other: locations to honor the extra random names among the many 23,000 or so to ever play within the majors.

“It gives you the opportunity to remember players you haven’t thought about a lot,” Minter mentioned. “For Astros/Yankees, immediately I thought of Gerrit Cole. But it’s fun to think of those older players. It gives you a sense of nostalgia and a reason to flip through those mental baseball cards.”