The longest game in the history of professional baseball begins at 8:25 p.m. on Saturday, April 18th, 1981. It will finish on June 23rd of the same year.
This game is between two minor league teams: the Pawtucket Red Sox, the Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox; and the Rochester Red Wings, the Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals. Triple-A is where promising players go to prepare for the major leagues. It's a mixture of hot prospects who are on the fast track to the majors, former hot prospects who are trying to avoid falling short of their dreams, and older guys who are trying to find a way back into the majors after a slump or injury. The outcome of the game is of little consequence, but the players are still going to give it their all. They all have something to prove.
It's a cold night in Pawtucket, and the wind is blowing hard. Most of the players are hoping for a reasonably quick game as they start to play in front of an audience of around 1,740 fans. As the first pitch is thrown, they cannot imagine what the night is about to do to them.
The first problem is the wind: It's blowing into the ballpark, making it much harder for balls to fly out. Hits that would normally be surefire home runs are turning into outs. The second problem is the cold, which further impedes any sort of offense. These two things combine to make scoring a daunting task. Six innings go by, and neither team is able to break through. The first shot is fired at the top of the seventh inning: Left fielder Chris Bourjos dinks a ball to get designated hitter Mark Corey to home with a single, giving the Red Wings a 1-0 lead. The players' hearts must fill with optimism as Corey steps onto home plate. They must imagine the hearty meals, warm showers, and soft mattresses that await them in their houses and hotel rooms after this game is over. When Sox left fielder Chico Walker sprints home courtesy of a sacrifice fly from designated hitter Russ Laribee and ties the game in the bottom of the ninth inning, they probably hold on to some of that optimism. They don't want this game to go on any longer than it has to, but extra innings provide them with more opportunities to demonstrate their abilities; and besides, they can't imagine that this will tack on more than a few extra innings of play. Somebody will surely score in the eleventh or twelfth inning, and they'll all get to go home.
This is the last time that either team will score for twelve innings.
They just can't break through. They're tired; they're hungry; they're freezing; and all of these things are making it even harder for them to hit baseballs as the night progresses. They are trapped in a spiral of misery. Eventually, they start to question why the umpires, who have the authority to suspend play, aren't putting a stop to the madness. The league has a rule calling for games to stop at 12:50 a.m., but this rule has somehow not made its way into the home plate umpire's copy of the rule book. Between innings, he pulls the book out of his back pocket and consults it for any instruction on what to do, and he never finds anything. With no guidance on how to proceed, he decides to let play continue and hope for an end to come soon. This decision may seem cruel, but it is far from selfish: For as long as this game goes on, he has to stay behind the plate and call every pitch thrown by both teams. What's more, his nephew is at this game, and he doesn't want to keep the kid all night and worry the parents. He doubtlessly wants to go home just as much as the players who stand in front of him. Despite this, he persists because he believes that it is what he is supposed to do. As the night drags on, the players and managers will grow frustrated with his refusal to budge, but they cannot accuse him of being unprincipled.
As the game enters the early hours of the morning, the situation becomes increasingly desperate. The cold is getting even worse: In the bullpen, pitchers start a fire in a 55-gallon drum using pieces of wood torn off of the old ballpark benches, and some hitters in the dugout do the same with broken bats. There is also the hunger to contend with. Having never anticipated that the game could go on for this long, the clubhouses didn't bring enough food to sustain the players into the early morning, and they need to resupply urgently. They enlist the aid of somebody that Wings athletic trainer Richie Bancells, recounting the story years later, will describe simply as a "clubhouse kid," telling him to scrounge up food however he can. Somehow, he finds enough to get both clubhouses through the rest of the game.
Through all of this, there is one constant: Dave Huppert, the catcher for the Wings. Of all the players on the field, the catcher arguably has the hardest job. He spends hours on his knees (or squatting) in the dirt behind home plate; he has to catch every pitch, and letting a single one get by him could mean disaster; he is often responsible for signaling to the pitcher what to throw; he has to make some of the most important defensive plays in every game due to his position at home plate; and on top of all that, he has to hit baseballs in the other half of the inning. What's more, while the pitchers get taken out of the game after enough throws in order to preserve their arms, the catcher is typically expected to play all nine innings. It is a grueling and often thankless position. Dave doesn't yet know it, but he is subjecting himself to this demanding work for almost no reward at the major league level: He will only play fifteen games in the majors, and he will only record a single hit across all of them. After his brief stint as a player, he'll have a successful managerial career with a smorgasbord of minor league teams, but "Dave Huppert" will never be a household name. However, none of that matters right now. What matters is what Dave is about to do for his team. On this ungodly night, Dave will stay in as catcher for all but the very last inning. He will be a plank of wood for his teammates to cling to through immensely troubled waters. Very little glory awaits him for this act of heroism, but he does it anyway because that is what the catcher does. The appreciation of his deliriously exhausted teammates is reward enough.
Being a minor league game, this fiasco doesn't have many people paying attention to it at the time, but some immediately notice when it goes on longer than expected. One of these people is Xiomara, the wife of Sox relief pitcher Luis Aponte. On game day, Luis is typically home at around 11:30; but he's trapped with the rest of his team into the small hours of the morning tonight, even though he's taken out of the game before the eleventh inning. When he's not home at the usual time, Xiomara assumes that he's out on the town. Some time after 2 a.m., Luis is finally shown mercy: Sox manager Joe Morgan lets him go home early. When he gets there, his wife is waiting for him at the front door, and she is having none of his explanation. After he insists that the Sunday paper will prove that he was actually at the game, she finally relents and lets him in. It doesn't. The game goes on for so long that it can't be reported on until Monday, and he again has to plead with his wife to wait on a newspaper to exonerate him. One has to wonder if he thinks that his four innings of scoreless pitching were worth it in the end.
Most fans of baseball will not learn about this game until after its conclusion, but a few will witness the full extent of its horror firsthand. Almost all of the 1,750 fans who showed up for the first pitch will be gone when the game finally comes to a stop. It's Easter tomorrow, and most of them have early church service or family celebration to be up for. However, a dedicated few, out of either fierce loyalty or morbid curiosity, will watch the entire thing — 19 of them, to be exact. With the exception of the umpire's nephew, who will be asleep, all of them will receive either season or lifetime passes to the ballpark. Staying to watch a game for this long shows immense love for the game of baseball, and the ballpark will recognize this by giving them all the baseball they could ever want. They do not need the promise of such rewards to stay with this game into the early hours of the morning, of course, which is precisely what makes them deserving. They earn those passes by showing that they would do it all again for no reward whatsoever.
At the top of the 21st inning — around one in the morning — the teams encounter what could be the light at the end of the tunnel: Dave Huppert, ever the hero, bats in another run, bringing the score to 2-1. Finally, everyone at the ballpark must think. This long nightmare is coming to an end. In the bottom of the inning, Sox first baseman Dave Koza claws his way to second base, and third baseman Wade Boggs comes up to the plate. Out of all the players in this ballpark tonight, Boggs will go on to have the most success in the major leagues. He will retire a twelve-time All-Star, an eight-time Silver Slugger Award winner, a five-time American League batting champion, a two-time Gold Glove Award winner, and a World Series champion. Two major league teams (the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays) will retire his number, and he will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in the first year that he is eligible with 91.9% of the vote. At least one magazine will rank him among the 100 greatest baseball players of all time. For now, however, he is merely one of the countless prospects toiling in the minor leagues and waiting for a chance on the big stage.
This is Wade's fifth year in Triple-A. Seeing the potential that will eventually take him to the greatest heights of the sport, the Red Sox drafted him in the seventh round of the 1976 MLB draft right after he graduated high school, and he's been waiting for them to call him up to the majors ever since. He must have an inkling that his time will come soon, but he cannot take anything for granted. Every at-bat is an opportunity to further prove his worthiness. Any at-bat where he doesn't give it his all is an opportunity for onlookers to say that he lacks drive, that he lacks passion, that he lacks the unshakeable will that defines all-time great athletes. He only has one option.
As he steps up to the plate, he must feel his teammates' eyes on him. They are all hoping for him to fail. To them, he is just one of the hundreds of guys with a bat and a dream that they have played with over the course of their careers; and while he may show more potential than most, his ambitions mean nothing to them in this moment. All they care about is that he can set them free if he gets out. They did not see all of the weekend afternoons spent throwing a ball around in the backyard of his Tampa home, the long after-school practices at Plant High School, the jeering of rival parents as he stared down teenage pitchers, the frustration on his face as he struck out in big games, the silent car rides after tough losses, the evenings spent hitting balls in a cramped cage until his shoulder felt like it was going to come apart, the cheering from the stands as he blasted a hanging curveball out of the park for the first time, the look on his face as he first realized that he could really be something, the quiet dinners as he thought about his future, the phone call asking him if he wanted to play for the Red Sox, the cheers and congratulations from his family and friends when they learned that he was drafted, the hard pats on the back from older relatives at family gatherings, the guarantees that he would be a star, the ride from Tampa to Pawtucket, and the half-decade of long games and longer practices that have led him to this moment, this at-bat, this miserable night in a part of America that most people only know from Family Guy. Countless moments of his life have been dedicated to allowing him to play baseball at this instant. What do you think he does?
He steps into the batter's box, and he plays baseball.
The crack of the bat must sound like thunder. As the ball sails into the outfield, the dread follows naturally for all who witness it. When Wade Boggs drives Dave Koza in with a double, tying the game at 2-2, a chorus of groans erupts from his own dugout. They do not yet know that the game will go on for another eleven innings — three hours — before commissioner Harold Cooper is finally reached by phone and demands that play be suspended immediately with horror in his voice, but none of them will be surprised when it does. Years after the game is finished up when the teams next meet in June, Wade will say that he's not sure if his teammates want to hug him or assault him as he makes his way back to the dugout. One must imagine that he thought it was worth it in the end.