The traditional second anniversary gift is cotton. So it would be appropriate for Umpbump to offer free t-shirts to all of our loyal readers. Or at least socks.

But instead, we’ve put together a list of all of our highlights from the last 12 months. These are posts that garnered both critical acclaim and record breaking traffic (record breaking for us, anyway).

It’s not as much fun as socks, but it’s cheaper.

Without further ado, the Umpbump Year in Review:

1. Capitalizing on the runaway freight train that was Mitt Romney, Umpbump named its All-Mormon team.
2. Umpbump interviewed the composer of baseball opera “The Summer King,” Daniel Sonenberg. We also sat down with Philadelphia Daily News baseball writer and former Baseball Writers of America President Paul Hagen. And don’t forget our tete-a-tete with Deadspin’s Will Leitch.
3. We brought you Hot Baseball Wives, including burgeoning popstar Alejandra Tejada.
4. We proved the legend of the Elusive Jamie Kotsay! And then found more never-before-seen pics.
5. We told you what players we’d like to take out of the Hall of Fame.
6. For the second consecutive season we graded all the teams on their Hot Offseason Action.
7. We kept you up to date on the Unfortunate Facial Hair of Reed Johnson, Pedro Feliz, and especially Kevin Youkilis.
8. We celebrated the first annual Douchie Awards, honoring the biggest douchebags in baseball.
9. We ventured east — far east — and told you about Trey Hillman’s restaurant in Japan and about the contact hitting revolution being led by Andy Sheets.
10. We launched the Umpbump Fantasy League. The draft is tomorrow!

As always, we’d like to thank the other bloggers out there who link to our posts (especially Deadspin, Rob Neyer, The Big Lead, Sports by Brooks and Baseball Think Factory) and all the readers who subscribe to our feed.

Just a reminder, in addition to this site, you can read our stuff on MLB Trade Rumors on Saturday afternoons, 1:00-5:00pm Central Time.

Happy Birthday to us! Now where’s the cake?

Umpbump turns one year old today and to celebrate we’re counting down our greatest hits. It’s been a wild year full of steroid rumors, unfortunate facial hair, hot baseball wives, Japanese imports, car crash cover-ups and way, way too many pink hats.

We’ve had a great time blogging about it all. And we’re looking forward to another great year. But for now, here it is, your “Year in Umpbump”:

• First we learned Carl Pavano had a girlfriend, and she was a hottie. Then we discovered what his girl was really after — Derek Jeter.
• We kept you current on all the “Hot Offseason Action”.
• Sarah let you know exactly what she thought about pink hats.
• Then she came up with a reason to look at photos of Gabe Kapler and his babies.
• Something furry started growing on Jason Giambi’s upper lip.
• Alejandro and Nick gave you the dirt on Mrs. “Rockets” Matsuzaka.
• Nick chased the myth of the gyroball.
• Keith Foulke found religion.
• We took you back in time, to when John Rocker was a huge (monstrous) success.
• Alejandro told you exactly what he thought of MLB’s deal with DirecTV, and the New York Times noticed!

As you all can see, we also redesigned the blog from the ground up. Well, actually, we took a Wordpress theme (Earthling2) and modified it to fit our needs (and wants). Mainly, we wanted two right columns instead of one. We think it leads itself to better organizing of the links and such.

We also kept a contrasting color to that of the main column so as to not cause strain on the eyes.

A big group hug and a toast to all of those who made Umpbump a stunning success in its first year.

Cheers!