dirtygames.ca

This will be brief, but it bears mentioning:

Major League Baseball brought in the wild-card in 1995. It has added an extra round to the October playoffs, made for more exciting pennant races down the stretch and generally put a lot of money into the pockets of the people who own the teams.

It was somewhat of a new concept when it was introduced, but when it was open for debate and voting in 1993, the idea was explained, debated and then voted upon by all 28 owners.

The vote was 27-1 one in favour of bringing in the wild-card system. Since then, of course, baseball has survived a labour stoppage, a steroids scandal and is now  more profitable than ever, with average attendance rising to a record-breaking level.

The one dissenting owner? Yup … George Dubya Bush … who provided this statement after the vote:

“I made my arguments and went down in flames. History will prove me right.”

Damn. He’s made that claim before. All I will say is that history has a lot of proving to do, and it needs to get started, like, soonish.

ESPN has all the details about just how wrong Bush was at predicting the future of the business.