Wild Card History

Joel Dinda runs MWLguide.com and also has a blog called a dabbler's journal. He had a post up yesterday that my google alert caught for this morning and it ties in (twice) with a little Appleton baseball history. It is an article from an issue of The Sporting News in 1978

Waterloo May Become Baseball's First Wild-Card Playoff Qualifier

Organized Baseball's first wild-card playoffs could become a reality early in September, provided one of the Midwest League's two first-half divisional champions--Appleton or Quad Cities--finishes on top again in the final second-half standings.

The wild-card arrangements, which will be used only if there is a repeat champion in one division and the other division title is divided between two clubs, were announced August 24 by league President Bill Walters.

If first and second-half divisional championships are split in both the North and South, best-of-three semifinal series will begin in Appleton and Quad Cities on September 1, to be followed by a best-of-three series between the winners for the overall championship.

Should the Foxes and Angels repeat as second-half titlists, there would be no semifinals; the two clubs would begin a best-of-five series September 1 in Appleton.

Click on the link to find out what happened. It is rather odd that this decision about the playoff rules would be made in late August. Shouldn't this possibility have been forseen at, oh, I don't know, some point a whole heck of a lot earlier?

Where is the second tie-in? Near the bottom of the post there is a bit about an intentional walk gone awry.

In the process of issuing an intentional pass to Burlington's Ivan Rodriguez August 20, Appleton (Midwest) pitcher Mark Esser made an eighth-inning pitch a little too good. Opportunist Rodriguez jumped on the offering, which was in the strike zone, and doubled home the final two runs in an 8-2 Bees' victory.

Dinda notes that the Ivan Rodriguez is not Pudge. He found this gem at a site called Paper of Record while researching Esser's career, which Dinda calls odd.

Looking at Esser's numbers at The Baseball Cube, it went a little something like this:

Appleton Foxes, 1978: 9-2, 7 saves, 41 games, 1 start, 4.29 ERA
Iowa Oaks, 1979: 1-5, 3 saves, 43 games, 6 starts, 6.62 ERA
Chicago White Sox, 1979: 0-0, 2 games. 16.20 ERA
Appleton Foxes, 1980: 4-0, 5 games, 5 starts, 1.22 ERA
Glens Falls White Sox, 1980: 3-5, 9 games, 9 starts, 5.14ERA
Iowa Oaks, 1980: 3-7, 11 games, 11 starts, 4.43ERA
Glens Falls White Sox, 1982: 1-1, 9 games, 6 starts, 6.51ERA