[HN Gopher] The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win
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The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win
Author : mooreds
Score : 28 points
Date : 2025-10-15 11:18 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mlb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mlb.com)
| adam_patarino wrote:
| Imagine doing a beer an inning
| brudgers wrote:
| If you are doing that at a normal game, you've got a
| problem...it might be accepted behavior in your social circle,
| but you have problem.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That's quite a bit of alcohol to be drinking, but that alone
| does not make it a "problem". Ill-advised? Sure. But whether
| it's a "problem" depends on other factors - for example
| there's a big difference between drinking a can of <5% ABV
| beer and >9% ABV beer per inning. Drinking too much alcohol
| one time does not a problem make.
| verdverm wrote:
| Anyone who can drink a beer per inning is not doing it as a
| one time thing. If you drink infrequently, you won't be
| capable of doing this and remaining in a capacity becoming
| of public places with children around
| CivBase wrote:
| To be fair, OP didn't say anything about being at the
| game. Could be at home.
|
| 9x 4% 12.5oz beers in 3 hours is quite a lot, but it's
| definitely something that could be accomplished without
| the person necessarily having a problem. I know plenty of
| people who are not alcoholics but have stories of one-off
| nights like that with friends.
|
| Definitely don't do this in a public, child-friendly venu
| though. That would be grossly irresponsible.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| You assume the game goes at a decent speed and finishes.
| Such games tend to end once people are too drunk to play.
| brudgers wrote:
| Competitive drinking is a sport worthy of early
| retirement.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| "drinking a can of <5% ABV beer ... per inning" is binge
| drinking:
|
| From
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge_drinking#Definitions
|
| > the term has been described in academic research to mean
| consuming five or more standard drinks (male), or four or
| more drinks (female),[12] over a two-hour period.
|
| > Drinking too much alcohol one time does not a problem
| make
|
| When I was in college, a lot of people would define
| alcoholism in their heads so that they didn't call
| themselves alcoholics, when in fact they were exhibiting
| textbook alcoholism. (Not that I have a perfect past
| myself.)
|
| Needless to say, "a beer an inning" isn't the kind of
| behavior that I will publicly glorify; nor will I try to
| handwave it away as "not a problem."
| arolihas wrote:
| 5 drinks in 2 hours once in a blue moon isn't that bad.
| It's not a problem.
| CivBase wrote:
| A single session of binge drinking does not an alcoholic
| make. An "alcoholic" is defined by their regular abuse of
| alcohol, not a single instance of binge drinking.
|
| Binge drinking can obviously be a symptom of alcoholism,
| but IMO it's not appropriate to declare people you don't
| know are alcoholics based on a comment about an
| theoretical instance of binge drinking.
| brudgers wrote:
| A baseball season has a minimum of 162 games.
|
| Even if you play one-beer-per-inning only 1 in 20 games
| (5% of the time) and only when watching your team, that's
| more than once a month for the six month regular season.
|
| Alcohol causes problems besides alcoholism.
| brudgers wrote:
| A one time nine beers game would not normally be
| constructed as "one beer per inning."
|
| Because one-beer-per-inning is a drinking game that
| involves an intent to drink nine beers...and because beer
| sales typically cut off at the seventh inning, one -beer-
| per-inning requires buying multiple beers at a time, so it
| is unlikely to happen accidentally.
|
| But to be clear, if you're young nine beers probably won't
| kill you (particularly if you train) and can youthful
| folly. But at 47 or 55 or 60 it is another story...not one
| that is usually a happy story.
| ksherlock wrote:
| That's the 9-9-9 challenge - 9 innings, 9 beers, 9 hotdogs.
| tclancy wrote:
| It's the hot dogs that weirds me out.
| bluedino wrote:
| 9 beers is a lot but it's not THAT many.
|
| - a drunk
| simpaticoder wrote:
| It's a lot, but not egregiously so especially when you
| consider it's spread over 3 hours. That's 3 beers an hour
| for 3 hours...if you're big (like over 200lb) you're going
| to be drunk but certainly upright. If you're smaller, well,
| results may vary.
| arolihas wrote:
| A lot of teetotalers here
| grahar64 wrote:
| The longest test cricket match lasted 11days and was called off
| because one team had to catch a boat home
| kryptiskt wrote:
| Isner-Mahut in 2010 Wimbledon took 11 hours over 3 days and
| ended 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68. It can't be repeated since
| they introduced tie breaks in the fifth set as a direct result
| of the travesty.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _7 Days in Hell_ is another direct result of this match. :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Days_in_Hell
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| The stadium where this game was played was recently torn down, as
| the team ownership and city could not come to an agreement
| regarding tax incentives, and the team moved away.
| jaskerr wrote:
| It was dumber than that. Governor Raimondo worked out a loan
| with the Fenway group that bought the franchise that would keep
| the team in Pawtucket. The speaker of the House wouldn't let
| the bill come to a vote, so the deal died. (I don't remember
| his name; I do remember he was from West Warwick.)
| more_corn wrote:
| After 33 innings can we really say that anyone really won?
| supportengineer wrote:
| The advertisers won.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Did you read the article? It was a AAA baseball game in 1981
| with about 20 people left in the stands by the end.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| When I used to go to McCoy stadium in the 1990s, their were signs
| all over the stadium commemorating the game. They even had the
| score printed on cups.
| tclancy wrote:
| Hung onto one of those cups for a decade or so. No idea where I
| got it as I was not at that game.
| jaskerr wrote:
| I still have a couple of those commemorative cups. They live in
| the cupboard, used only occasionally.
| geoffharcourt wrote:
| The scoreboard running all the way around the circumference of
| the cup was awesome. My dad worked in RI for a few years as a
| kid and we went to a bunch of games at McCoy. I didn't realize
| until I was older how many long-time big leaguers appeared in
| that game!
| xupybd wrote:
| A test cricket match can last for up to five days and is the
| longest format of the game, with each team having two innings.
| Each day consists of about 90 overs and typically lasts for 6-7
| hours, including lunch and tea breaks.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| No matter how many videos or articles I've read, I still can't
| wrap my head around the rules of baseball.
|
| Is there any guide for us non-americans to help us gain enough
| grasp on the rules to, at least, understand the dynamics of the
| game?
|
| Learning the basic of (american) football was much easier. I'm
| not writing any treaties any time soon, but at least I can follow
| the games and enjoy the "craftsmanship" of the players.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The rules aren't important. What's important is, it's linear.
| Every time I throw this ball, a hundred different things can
| happen in a game. He might swing and miss, he might hit it. The
| point is, you never know. You try to anticipate, set a strategy
| for all the possibilities as best you can, but in the end it
| comes down to throwing one pitch after another and seeing what
| happens. With each new consequence, the game begins to take
| shape.
| whartung wrote:
| There's a lot of truth here.
|
| As they say "In baseball, anything can happen, but often
| doesn't". Oh boy, is that true.
|
| Also, baseball is the most random of the major sports in the
| US. Consider the playoffs, statistically, any team getting
| into the playoffs has an equal chance of winning the World
| Series. It's just that dynamic.
|
| The other interesting consideration about baseball is that
| when the ball is out of control, is when the scoring happens.
| This is in contrast to most every other sport where control
| of the ball is necessary to score.
|
| If the ball is there bouncing around in the outfield, and
| runners are on base, guess what's happening.
|
| It's also why single players do not dominate that game. The
| random nature, and all they can do is get the ball in play.
| After that, good luck predicting it.
|
| I love the game. I love the anticipation of the pitch, how
| the infield basically freezes and gets ready. My heart skips
| whenever the ball is hit well. Single? Double? Home run?
| GRAND SLAM!? Oh, nope, foul.
|
| Next pitch!
|
| Play ball!
| dmurray wrote:
| > Is there any guide for us non-americans to help us gain
| enough grasp on the rules to, at least, understand the dynamics
| of the game?
|
| If you've already read "no matter how many" and don't get it?
| Then no, you probably can't be helped.
|
| It's not very different conceptually from cricket. One player
| throws the ball hard, another tries to hit it far away with a
| bat. If you hit it far enough, you get to run; if you run far
| enough before the other team throw the ball back, you might
| score some points. If you keep failing to hit the ball, you
| will (probabilistically) soon be out. If the other team catches
| the ball, you're out. If enough players are out, the teams swap
| sides and the other team gets to try hitting the ball.
|
| The rest is details. You can find them in any of the videos or
| articles you've already failed to comprehend without this
| primer.
| ghaff wrote:
| American football is probably pretty straightforward at a
| _very_ basic level. (And very complex as you dig deeper--
| coverages, penalties though even the refs seemingly don 't
| understand them a lot of the time, man in motion rules. A lot
| it's simplified because at any serious level, players do their
| thing and don't violate most a the less straightforward points
| that much. I think rugby is pretty similar.
|
| As someone who reffed it at a very casual level, ice hockey
| seems simpler overall.
|
| Baseball--I don't know but then I grew up with it. You pitch
| the ball, you hit the ball, you get the ball into play (or
| not), you run around the bases. Again, lots of subtle points.
| To actually answer your question, I assume so. But I don't have
| one myself.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Buy* an old baseball sim game for a few dollars and play a few
| games from start to finish. Finish a season or two and you will
| understand more rules than most Americans!
|
| *https://archive.org/details/r.b.i-baseball-21
| devilbunny wrote:
| The game itself is fairly simple; it's just that it's existed
| in codified form for like 140 years and they have had to make
| rule adjustments in every era to account for the next game-
| breaking strategy, so the corpus of rules is huge.
|
| Each team gets up to nine turns on offense. If the home team
| (which would be on offense in the second half of the ninth
| inning) is ahead when their final turn on offense would occur,
| the game ends.
|
| Each batter gets pitched to until they hit the ball in-bounds,
| they get three strikes, or they get four "balls". A strike
| occurs when a hittable ball (over home plate, between the
| batter's knees and shoulders, as a rough approximation) goes
| past the batter with no attempt to hit, or when any ball is
| swung at by the batter without a successful hit in-bounds (so,
| foul balls are counted as strikes, except that you can't strike
| out on a foul - however, if you do hit a foul ball and a
| defender catches it before it hits the ground, you are out).
| Almost all other pitches [0] are "balls", and after four balls
| the player automatically advances to first base.
|
| Getting all the way back around to home plate scores a point.
|
| After the defending team gets three outs against the batting
| team, they switch roles.
|
| There are a lot more details and nuance, but that's baseball in
| a nutshell.
|
| [0] A very famous example of a pitch that was neither a ball
| nor a strike against the batter:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih_ovjbwQGk
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Hit ball within 90 degrees of home plate position and try to
| make it to as many bases as possible before being tagged out
| (by a player holding the ball) or forced out by a player
| holding the ball tagging a base that you are forced to travel
| to (due to a runner behind you having to advance or it being
| first base if you're the batter).
|
| When ball is in air and caught without touching the ground by
| opposing team, the batter is automatically out and any already
| onbase runners must return to the tag the base they were on
| before the hit.
|
| If batter swings and misses its a strike. If a batter doesnt
| swing but its a fair pitch (over the plate and above knees and
| at or below chest) its a strike. If the batter hits the ball
| outside of 90 degree range, its a foul ball and counts as a
| strike (but cant count for third strike or "strikeout"
| condition).
|
| If pitcher throws ball outside of fair zone, and batter doesnt
| swing at it, its a "ball".
|
| If batter gets 3 strikes he's out. If pitcher throws 4 "balls",
| its a "walk" and batter advances to 1st base for free and any
| runners on base in front of batter get to advance 1 base as
| well.
|
| Game is 9 innings, each team gets one turn at offense and one
| turn at defense per inning. Each team's turn lasts until there
| are 3 outs.
|
| If teams are still tied at end of 9th inning, they simply
| continue playing more innings until they are no longer tied.
| There are no game clocks in baseball.
| projektfu wrote:
| There is a pitch clock in MLB since 2023. If the pitcher does
| not pitch within 15 seconds (or 20 if someone is on base)
| then a ball is automatically awarded. There is a penalty
| against batters also for delay of game.
|
| Before, the umpire could call this without an official timer
| but rarely did.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Fair, still no overall game clocks and this is not
| necessarily true of non-MLB games.
| ygjb wrote:
| You didn't actually include the score condition, which is
| that a player advances to each base and then the home plate!
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Was hoping that was obvious, but good callout!
|
| Bases must be tagged in order by runners. And they can
| safely wait at a base without getting tagged out as long as
| there is not a runner behind them that must advance.
| Anytime they are offbase they are at risk.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| The summaries always seem to be either "it's two guys throwing
| a ball to each other with another guy trying to bat it away
| with a stick" or "a line drive is out, except when someone
| pulls a Boston reverse. In that case the guy is still out, but
| his team (which previously was out) is now in, but only if the
| ball was originally spinning counter-clockwise. If the ball is
| spinning clockwise, the team that is out gets an out, and an
| innings which they can use at any time if they are playing at
| home, and only during a time out called by the home pitcher if
| playing away". There is no in between.
| post_break wrote:
| 10cent beer night is up there with this one
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxTtzLUteDA
| elteto wrote:
| Please, no one tell Peter Thiel about the 33 innings. He might
| claim the umpire is the Antichrist.
| sylens wrote:
| There is a great book about this called "Bottom of the 33rd" that
| really goes into the stories of every person involved in that
| game to the point where it seems like a nexus event for more than
| half of baseball
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