![]() ![]() HANSEN: Do you think it would've been better if the game had been finished in obscurity on Easter morning?īARRY: You know, there's a part of me that thinks that would be a wonderful, fitting ending. And the 19 who returned for the conclusion of the game really felt as those all these other people now are going to say, oh, they were at the longest game but, nah, they really weren't. There are people from the BBC, Japanese reporters, all the national baseball media are there. ![]() Did that cheapen it in some way?īARRY: And so the country turns to the city of Pawtucket, and so whereas there were 19 people in the stands there are now 6,000. But this is the interesting part: For the 33rd inning, it was played two months later and everyone in the country was let in on this game. HANSEN: Well, you know, there were only a handful of people left in the stands who had stuck it out all night in the cold and, you know, a very intimate kind of - there was an almost brotherhood of the people who were still waiting in the stands. If you looked at this game and said, well, you know, is this guy going to make the major leagues, you would say Ripken may not make it. HANSEN: And he only went 2-for-13, right?īARRY: Right. He was being groomed as the next third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles, but certainly Cal Ripken was in that game and he played all 33 innings. And whereas Wade Boggs was not really much of a prospect - it seems silly to say that now, given his 3,000 hits. There was another player who's known for his longevity, showing up for games, Cal Ripken, Jr.īARRY: Cal Ripken, Jr., sure. HANSEN: Wade Boggs is not the only famous baseball name in that game. In the 21st, Rochester had gone ahead 2-1 in the top of the 21st and then Wade Boggs gets up - Wade Boggs who would go on to be a member of the Hall of Fame - he hits a double, ties up the game, he's standing on second base and he looks into his dugout and he can't tell whether his teammates want to hug him or kill him because now it's somewhere around 2 o'clock in the morning. The baseball would be hit into the air and it wouldn't go anywhere. It was very cold and the wind was blowing in. And first the night itself played a role. I mean, was it just the numb backsides or in what way?īARRY: Well, they started at around 8 o'clock on Holy Saturday night. HANSEN: In your book, you described the game took on a sort of absurd dream- like quality. And no one was aware of it, except for the umpires. It was in there 1980, it was there in 1982, it's there today, but for some reason in 1981 it just fell out of the script. They closed - most baseball teams have curfews, except for some reason that one paragraph that allowed for a curfew in the International League rules. And in the 15th inning, I think everybody thought, OK, we're almost done here. ![]() ![]() What was it about this one weird night that kept things tied up for so long?īARRY: The game was tied in the bottom of the ninth 1-1 by Pawtucket. HANSEN: Well, as we all know, there is no clock in baseball, so theoretically a game could go on forever and it seemed at times that this one would. WBUR: Hope, Redemption and Baseball's Longest Game." He joins us from member station WBUR in Boston, home to the Paw Sox, Major League affiliate, the Boston Red Sox. They had seen 882 pitches thrown 246 batters come to the plate 60 strikeouts and the equivalent of three and two- thirds games, and this one still wasn't over. They had sat in the cold for nearly eight and a half hours. When the last handful of diehard fans left McCoy Stadium, the date had turned to April 19th. There were fewer than 2,000 people in attendance for the ApAAA baseball game between the visiting Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox - the Paw Sox as the faithful call them. ![]()
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