THE NEVER ENDING GAME

August 10, 2023

Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that loves baseball as much as Adrián Beltré hated people touching his head.

Let's dive in.

Today's story is about an epic battle between two minor league teams led by future hall of famers.

On April 18, 1981 the Pawtucket Red Sox faced off against the Rochester Red Wings.

At the time, Wade Boggs was playing for Pawtucket, and Cal Ripken Jr. was on the Red Wings.

The game began like any other, but it wouldn't end until 8 hours and 25 minutes later.

The Sox took a 1-0 lead in the seventh, but Rochester tied it up in the bottom of the ninth.

After that, the scoreboard had goose eggs on both sides for the next 11 innings.

As you can imagine, fatigue started to set in.

On top of that, the playing conditions were brutal.

The weather was so cold that players burned broken bats and the stadium's wooden benches to warm themselves, and the clubhouses ran out of food.

In the 21st inning, the Red Wings went up 2-1, but then Wade Boggs knocked in a run for the Sox in the bottom half; he said his teammates couldn't decide if they wanted to "hug him or slug him."

The battle continued, and nobody touched home plate for another 11 innings.

Sometime after three in the morning, Harold Cooper (the President of the league) woke up to repeated calls from Pawtucket's GM.

Of course Cooper was blown away that the game was still happening and put the kibosh on it.

Finally the game was officially suspended at 4:07 a.m. on April 19 in the 32nd inning.

Out of the 1,740 fans that showed up that night, 20 diehards were still in the stands.

The players finally got a chance to sleep, but not before they broke a shit ton of records.

Here's a few of the big ones:

  • Longest Game (Both in terms of innings and time)

  • Most strikeouts (Rochester with 34)

  • Most plate appearances (Tom Eaton, Cal Ripken, Dallas Williams - 15 each)

  • Most at-bats (Dave Koza, Lee Graham, Chico Walker - 14 each)

  • Most put-outs for one team (Pawtucket - 99)

They finished the damn thing two months later, on June 23rd.

5,746 showed up to watch 18 minutes of baseball.

In the first inning of play that day, the 33rd overall, Packtucket got right down to business against Steve Grilli, who wasn't even with the Red Wings when this whole saga began.

With the bases loaded, Dave Koza hit a 2-2 curveball into left field to walk it off.

He said it was one of the best days of his life.

When the dust settled, the whole thing took 882 pitches.

Our friends at Dugout Mugs are famous for turning bat barrels into drinkware.

They made a special edition “Inked” version of the Bat Mugs, and honestly, they’re pretty f**king awesome.

Grab one - it’ll be your new favorite go-to cup.

If you wanna save some cash while you’re at it, use MUG25 for a 25% discount.

Oh and by the way, if you don’t absolutely love your mug, they’ll buy it back from you, no questions asked.

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

There's only one thing I can think about right now.

Whammy lost an eye at age 11, but he still made it to the big leagues.

His fake eye was known as his "evil eye" and was known to be intimidating to hitters.

His numbers were solid, but he was plagued by control issues.

When he in the minors in '54, he had an amazing season with the Brunswick Pirates; going 27-6 with a 2.06 ERA.

Before that season, he also played semi-pro basketball; completely disproving the "pitchers aren't athletes" myth.

Consider us impressed, Whammy.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

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