Longest ever baseball game

Playing the Long Game

It makes your butt hurt just to think about it. It was on this day in 1981 that the longest ever professional baseball game took place between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings. A whopping 33 innings were played with the game lasting a hefty eight hours and 25 minutes. Even though baseball has a rule that stipulates playing extra innings if the game is tied, there is a curfew that ensures the play stops after a certain amount of time.

But for some reason, the umpire’s rule book did not contain this information, so the game carried on and on.It was like some sort of curse. Every time one team went into the lead and looked like winning, the opposition would accidentally knock in a run, causing a massive amount of resentment on both sides. At around 4am the president of the league heard about the game and ordered it to stop. By this time only 19 spectators remained and all the players were delirious from exhaustion. The game resumed two months later and took a mere 18 minutes to complete with Pawtucket finally winning.