The potency of a singular Major League Baseball game is roughly the equivalent of a weak cup of Folgers. And then the playoffs arrive, and it’s triple shot espressos, on the house.
When the league introduced the wild-card game to the playoff format in 2012, it brought an unprecedented level of urgency to proceedings that typically unfold over best-of-five or best-of-seven sagas. Suddenly, seasons came down to a matter of three or four hours, not five or six days.
And the emotions produced in that overheated format rarely disappoint.
While that immediacy has been watered down a bit with the 2022 introduction of the best-of-three wild card series, the urgency has not – especially when the Game 1 winner went on to win all 12 series to date – 10 of them via two-game sweep.
With the four 2025 wild-card series set to tip off Sept. 30, USA TODAY Sports takes a look at the most surreal moments of the era:
2012: Infield-fly bedlam
The very first National League wild-card game showed just how supercharged emotions can get – and force everyone to scurry for their rulebook.
With the Atlanta Braves trailing 6-3 in the top of the eighth, Freddie Freeman drew a walk and David Ross singled to bring the tying run to the plate with one out. Andrelton Simmons’ pop fly to shallow left field seemed to mute that momentum – until the Turner Field crowd started screaming and St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Pete Kozma peeled off the ball at the last moment.
Weird move. Left fielder Matt Holliday was more than a few feet behind him; Kozma “swore I heard him” amid the screams of 52,631. The ball fell. The crowd erupted. The bases were fixing to be loaded, with one out.
Yet left field umpire Sam Holbrook signaled that the infield-fly rule was in effect, befuddling the casual observer who might not have realized that “infield” is just an operative term, and a missed catch well on the outfield grass could qualify.
Meanwhile, Atlanta went nuts.
A 19-minute delay ensued when fans tossed trash and likely other unmentionables onto the turf. And while the bases did get loaded on a Brian McCann walk, closer Jason Motte came in to strike out Michael Bourn.
Season over, and Chipper Jones’ career over in Atlanta, officially so after a protest was denied. Hey, you can’t protest a judgment call. And Holbrook made the right call in that situation. (Probably).
2015: Sean Rodriguez loses it
The Pirates are approaching almost four decades of nearly uninterrupted ineptitude in Pittsburgh, but the handful of times they poked their head into the playoffs supplied some wild memories. On the positive side: PNC Park in full throat, forcing Johnny Cueto to drop the ball.
On the negative side: Sean Rodriguez scoring a TKO against a water cooler.
Oh, that didn’t effect the outcome of the 2015 wild-card tussle between the Pirates and Chicago Cubs. More like the wild coda of a frustrating night in which Jake Arrieta dominated the Pirates, throwing the first postseason shutout for the Cubs in 70 years.
It all went sideways when Pirates reliever Tony Watson drilled Arrieta with a pitch, causing benches to empty in a relatively moderate tussle, by baseball standards. Rodriguez, the veteran utilityman, positioned himself as “likes-to-fight-guy,” aiming to break containment and go after any Cub he could find.
Eventually, David Ross (that man is everywhere!) grabbed Rodriguez near the neck, which really set him off. Ejected and dejected, he threw a dizzying array of right hooks and left crosses at a Gatorade jug in the Pirates dugout.
Pitchers throwing shutouts. Pitchers batting. Backup infielders losing their mind. Maybe the game was better when it wasn’t “optimized.”
2016: A flying beer, a cooped-up closer
The one-game-and-out format magnifies everything, most notably fan emotions (see above) and managerial moves.
This AL wild card battle between Toronto and Baltimore featured all of that, in the ugliest fashion.
With the score tied 2-2 in the bottom of the seventh inning, Blue Jays outfielder Melvin Upton hit a routine fly to fairly deep left field, where the Orioles’ Hyun-Soo Kim camped under it. Just as the ball was about to fall into his glove, a nearly-full can of whizzed by his head, landing about three feet to the left of him.
Kim winced as he spotted the can, the catch made securely. Security and the umpiring crew rushed toward the outfield. And the Orioles were incensed.
“That’s about as pathetic as it gets,’’ says Orioles center fielder Adam Jones. ‘You don’t do that. I don’t care how passionate you are. Yell. Cuss. Scream. Say we suck. We’re horrible. We get it. We’re the opponent. You could hit him in the back of the head and you have no idea what could happen. That’s a full beer that’s being thrown.”
Amazingly, the malicious toss came one year after a similar bottle-chucking episode during the Blue Jays’ 2015 AL Division Series against Texas resulted in a banning of upper deck beer sales at Rogers Centre. Deep-pocketed fans, we suppose.
The drama reached its zenith in the ninth, 10th and 11th innings as the game remained deadlocked and Orioles manager Buck Showalter kept Zach Britton – coming off one of the greatest seasons ever for a closer – stuck in the bullpen. The Orioles never gave him a lead to save but they also saw their season end with their best pitcher on the sidelines when Ubaldo Jiménez gave up a walk-off 11th-inning homer to Edwin Encarnación.
“He’s our best pitcher,” says Jimenez, “and he couldn’t get in the game.”
2019: Juan Soto’s ball had eyes
Hard to imagine now, but the Washington Nationals once qualified for the playoffs five times in eight seasons. Yet they were sitting on a history of postseason futility – 0-4 in NLDS appearances – when they stared at a 3-1 deficit entering the bottom of the eighth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers.
That’s when crazy stuff started happening: Josh Hader hitting light-hitting Michael A. Taylor with a pitch. Ryan Zimmerman’s two-out ducksnort – exit velocity, 69.2 mph – found grass in short center field. A walk to Anthony Rendon, loading the bases.
Enter 20-year-old Juan Soto, already emerging as a generational talent yet locked in a left-on-left matchup with the All-Star Hader. No matter: He lashed a single to right field, a little harder – 97.9 mph – than Zimmerman’s. Hard enough that, even with two outs, right fielder Trent Grisham charged hard, knowing he might be able to throw out pinch runner Andrew Stevenson and choke off the tying run.
And then the ball swerved wickedly, a sharp right turn, right past Grisham.
The bases emptied. The Nationals were three outs from their first playoff triumph – even if just one lousy game – and, little did they know, on their way to a World Series title.
“It’s going to sting for a long time,” Grisham said in the aftermath.
2022: Buck Showalter comes up empty
The ’22 New York Mets already had a tragic feel about them, starting with a “this is our year!” optimism borne of signing Max Scherzer and then backing it up by roaring out to a 38-19 start. That June giddiness soon gave way to despair, though, as a 10 ½-game lead on June 2 was eaten away by the defending champion Atlanta Braves.
Eventually, both clubs landed on 101 wins. And since this was the first year of the expanded wild card playoff, there’d be no tiebreaker game and the Braves won the division based on head-to-head record.
Tough beat. And a tougher draw when the Soto-led San Diego Padres were their best-of-three match.
The series was squared 1-1 when Joe Musgrove squared off against Chris Bassitt in the decisive Game 3, and Musgrove was untouchable, retiring the first 12 Mets before a Pete Alonso single in the fifth.
When Musgrove came out for the sixth, the Padres leading 4-0, Showalter tried taking the air out of their tires.
He ordered the umpiring crew to inspect Musgrove’s face and equipment for banned substances, hinting in a pregame production meeting that Musgrove’s spin rates had been elevated in recent weeks.
Musgrove stood stone-faced as umpire Alfonso Marquez checked his ears, his face, his glove … and found nothing.
It was an embarrassing way for the Mets to go out, along with Showalter, who’d manage one more playoff-less season. In short, undressing an opposing pitcher is kind of like asking a question in court: You better know the answer before you ask.
Instead, Musgrove tossed seven innings of one-hit, shutout ball and the 101-win Mets went home.
“I’ve seen him do it before,’ Musgrove said of Showalter afterward. ‘I get it; they’re on their last leg, they’re desperate and it is what it is.
‘It motivated me a bit. It fired me up. An opportunity to stick it to them, a little bit.’