He calls himself MrBabyMan, but if you’re a regular contributor to Digg, he’s your daddy. He’s Andrew Sorcini — Digg’s most famous Digger, according to Network World‘s Paul McNamara, himself a formidable Digg heavyweight (see below) — and this afternoon MrBabyMan landed his 4,000 submission onto Digg’s front page.

Kazakhstan's radioactive legacy (PICS)_1257895336637.pngMcNamara writes:

[S]ince Sorcini joined Digg on Dec. 27, 2005, he has been averaging just shy of three front-page stories per day each and every day … for four years. (Hey, it took Pete Rose 24 seasons to accumulate his 4,256 hits.)

In case you don’t know, submissions reach the Digg front page through a group voting system and underlying algorithm that is both mysterious, and in the view of many participants, highly susceptible to domination by well connected “power Diggers” such as Sorcini. MrBabyMan has submitted for consideration more than 14,000 individual items — news stories, photographs, cartoons, videos and assorted ‘Net nonsense — or roughly 10 a day (although lately his submission rate seems to have become considerably less prolific).

Far back in second place on the all-time front-page Digg list, McNamara informs us, is Muhammad Saleem (msaleem), with 2,676 front-pagers. If Digg were a track, MrBabyMan would have lapped the field many times over.

By the way, that Digg icon above is from the actual 4,000th submission, a brutal photo essay from boston.com about “Kazakhstan’s radioactive legacy.” By the time I found that submission it had slipped to Page 2, but MrBabyMan was right back on the front page with this photo essay of a young child imitating faces made by cartoon character Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes. MrBabyMan, you got range!

McNamara snagged an interview with Sorcini that’s worth a read if you’re looking for advice from a genuine Digg legend.

(Full disclosure: Paul McNamara is a longtime friend and former colleague of mine. Mac is ranked 115th among Digg users, with 127 front-page submissions. Recently he generously volunteered to help me raise my Digg game, but I fear that once he cracks the top 100, he’ll start charging me. The bastard.)