Fond du Lac Dock Spiders
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The Fond du Lac Dock Spiders are a
baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...
team that plays in the
Northwoods League The Northwoods League is a collegiate summer baseball wooden bat league. All players in the league must have NCAA eligibility remaining in order to participate. The league is amateur, and players are not paid, so as to maintain their college el ...
(a collegiate summer baseball league). Based in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, the Dock Spiders play their home games at Herr-Baker Field on the campus of Marian University. The Dock Spiders won the 2018 Northwoods League Championship and 2020 Northwoods League Wisconsin-Illinois Pod Championship.


History

On August 15, 2016, it was announced that the
Wisconsin Timber Rattlers The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers are a Minor League Baseball team of the Midwest League and the High-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. They are located in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, a town on the outskirts of Appleton in the Fox Cities, and are na ...
(Class A
Midwest League The Midwest League is a Minor League Baseball league established in 1947 and based in the Midwestern United States. A Class A league for most of its history, the league was promoted to High-A as part of Major League Baseball's 2021 reorganizat ...
affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers) had partnered with Marian University to bring the 20th Northwoods League team to Fond du Lac. The on-campus Herr-Baker Field underwent renovations to accommodate the team. A name-the-team contest was held, with the five finalists being Barn Owls, Dock Spiders, Lake Flies, Pipsqueaks and Shantymen. On November 21, the Dock Spiders name, logo and colors were officially announced. The team appeared in
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as the best attention-grabbing new baseball club name for 2017. The team logo was designed by
San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...
marketing firm Brandiose. In 2017, the team's inaugural season, the Dock Spiders went 38-34 (.528). After posting a 16-20 record in the first half, the Dock Spiders went 22-14 in the second half to finish 3 games out of 1st place. The overall record put the Dock Spiders in a tie for the final playoff spot in the South Division; however, the Dock Spiders missed on a 3-way tiebreak with the Lakeshore Chinooks (who made the playoffs) and the Madison Mallards. In 2018, the Dock Spiders compiled a 39-31 overall record (.557) to take the final playoff spot in the South Division, with split-half records of 21-13 and 18-18. In the playoffs, the Dock Spiders won road games over the Madison Mallards 17-5 and the
Kalamazoo Growlers The Kalamazoo Growlers are a baseball team based in Kalamazoo, Michigan that plays in the Northwoods League, a summer collegiate baseball league. The Growlers were founded in 2013 and played their first game on May 28, 2014, losing to the then ...
3-1 to win the South Division title and advance to the championship series against the Duluth Huskies. Fond du Lac won the opening game of the best-of-3 series 3-0 at home, then lost at Duluth 8-1 before winning the deciding game 4-3 to clinch the team's first Northwoods League title in the franchise's second season of play. In 2019, the Dock Spiders went 36-35. During the 2020 COVID-19 shortened season, the Dock Spiders claimed the Northwoods League Wisconsin-Illinois Pod Championship. They defeated the
La Crosse Loggers The La Crosse Loggers are a La Crosse, Wisconsin based baseball team playing in the Northwoods League, a collegiate summer baseball league. Since the team's inaugural season in 2003, they have played at Copeland Park. The ballpark is nicknamed "t ...
14-3. Following the 2020 season, team owners Appleton Baseball Club, Inc, sold the team to Third Base Ventures, LLC, a group consisting of principal owner Craig Dickman and minority owners team president Rob Zerjav and Brad Raaths.


Dock Spiders in professional baseball


Year-by-year records


References


External links


Fond du Lac Dock Spiders official siteNorthwoods League official site
{{Wisconsin Sports Northwoods League teams Amateur baseball teams in Wisconsin Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Baseball teams established in 2016 2016 establishments in Wisconsin