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Aj2kc

The official logo of the #AJ2KC campaign.

#AJ2KC (hashtag coined by SonsofSteveGarvey) was a campaign spearheaded by Mike Petriello and friends to send Dodgers catcherA.J. Ellis to the 2012 All-Star game in Kansas City.  At the time of the campaign's announcement on May 15, Ellis had arguably the best offensive statistics of all catchers in the Major Leagues, making the push for his selection surprisingly unironic.

Despite an impressive slash line, A.J. Ellis was a long shot to be voted in due to inferior name recognition in comparison to the league's other top catchers.  To spread awareness, Mike Petriello plugged the campaign numerous times on his blog, Justin Drummond (@tenaciousjdd) created an A.J. Ellis facts tumblr, EephusBlue created T-shirts, and many Dodger fans tweeted fervent support with the hashtag #AJ2KC.  The campaign spread wide enough on the internet to get the attention and recognition of A.J. Ellis himself.  In a tweet on July 1, he stated, "Can never express enough thanks & appreciation from people like @mike_petriello @tenaciousjdd & @EephusBlue for pumping me up for ASG". 

Despite the best efforts of the campaign, Ellis did not recieve enough votes in the first few weeks to make the leaderboard in any of the official All-Star Game vote updates.  This dampened any possibility that the mainstream media would notice him as a candidate with serious potential to win.  In the last few weeks of voting, Ellis went into a mild slump, and his statistics were no longer arguably on the same level as Buster Posey, Yader Molina, or Carlos Ruiz.  This severely undercut the thesis of the campaign, which was that Ellis deserved to be there based on superior performance.  A.J. Ellis ended up not being selected to go to the All-Star game in 2012, but the campaign helped raise awareness and appreciation amongst the Dodger fan community for their new everyday catcher.

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