If You Build It, They Will Come

(Part II)  There are a few minor league teams in Iowa, including towns Burlington, Clinton, Waterloo, Quad Cities, Dubuque and Des Moines over the years.  There is also baseball in the towns of Clarinda, Sioux City, and Waterloo now, but they are not associated with MLB.  There exists leagues outside the MLB bubble, and today I'm going to parse out the Iowa Connections from the team from Clarinda. The Clarinda A's have ben around since 1955 and are currently a summer amateur baseball team. Summer amateur teams are built from players from the college level who want to build their baseball skills after the college season is over.  Players are unpaid to retain their eligibility. 38 players have played for the A's and then made it to the major leagues. Here's the second batch of them: Rafael Bournigal 1985-86 A's 86 cards in TCDB Los Angeles Dodgers  ( 1992 – 1994 ) Oakland Athletics  ( 1996 – 1998 ) Seattle Mariners  ( 1999 ) Jeff Branson 1986 A's 117 car...

The World Series is played every year (well, 1994...), and every year there is a winner.  The right team doesn't always win though.  No, sometimes the universe makes a mistake and the wrong team wins.  But how do we know who these "Misplaced Winners" are?   Well, this blog circles around one thing, and that's the Iowa Connection.  So, obviously every World Series champion should have at least one Iowa Connection, but not every one does.  Either I've missed the connection (possible!), or the universe messed up.  Thanos snapped his fingers and the Yankees won.  So lets look at those Iowa-less World Series champions and see who it should have been. If this universe happened, here are number of titles these Iowa Connections would have gained (2+): 4 - Davey Lopes 2 - Cal Eldred 2 - Corey Koskie 2 - Denis Menke 2 - Jerry McNertney 2 - John Wathan 2 - Paul Splittorff 2 - R. C. Stevens 2 - Gene Baker Note: I'm only going back to 1958 here,...