Record Setting Frustration

Little information survives about the players reaction to the legalization of Sunday baseball in New York City, but it's not hard to imagine how the Dodger players felt on the all night train ride from Boston after Saturday's twenty-six inning marathon.  Speaking for everyone, Tom Rice of the Eagle said the players and writers "would gladly have welcomed a week of fishing" instead, but such was not the case.  Playing on the one day most people were off from work was an obvious advantage for Charles Ebbets, but the benefits went beyond the obvious.  Unlike the Giants and Yankees who shared the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field was available to the Dodgers every Sunday.  As a result, Brooklyn hosted 20 Sunday home games in 1920 compared to 13 for the Giants and 12 for the Yankees.  Equally important was the fact that Sunday baseball was only permissible in five of the eight National League cities.  With each team playing 11 games in Brooklyn, it made financial sense to move a weekday game to Sunday by bringing visiting teams from places like Boston, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to Brooklyn for just one game.  In this case the Dodgers would play in Brooklyn on Sunday in between games in Boston on Saturday and Monday.

Boston Herald - May 4, 1920

Since the Saturday game lasted until 7:00, probably about two hours later than usual, the Dodgers must have been on a late train from Boston, the equivalent of today's red-eye plane flight.  By Sunday morning they were at Ebbets Field for a 3:00 game with the Phillies who had made a similar, but shorter  journey from Philadelphia.  Proving that Sunday baseball was a draw some 15-17,000 fans "shivered" through the contest which featured Burleigh Grimes for the Dodgers and George Smith for Philadelphia.  Even though his team had effectively played a triple-header the day before, Dodger manager Wilbert Robinson made only one lineup change, Otto Miller as catcher.  Once again the Dodger offense couldn't get started and Brooklyn trailed 3-0 heading to the bottom of the seventh.  Suddenly, however, the Brooklyn bats woke up and hits by Hi Myers and Ed Konetchy plated two runs (Brooklyn's first in 27 innings) but the Dodgers still trailed 3-2 heading to the ninth.  Wonderfully lapsing into nineteenth century baseball terminology, Rice wrote that with "one hand out," Zack Wheat came to plate.  The count went full when the future Hall of Famer deposited the next pitch over the right field fence to send the game to extra innings.

Casey Stengel in front of Ebbets Field's legendary right field wall.  Stengel's experience playing the wall as a Dodger helped him as a visiting player, but on May 2, 1920 there was a new challenge.

One wonders if there wasn't at least one Dodger player who wanted no part of extra innings regardless of who won.  For the next four innings, not only were there no runs, neither side managed a base hit. In the top of the thirteenth however, Philadelphia used a single, double and a sacrifice fly to score the go ahead run.  The Phillies might have had more, but former Dodger Casey Stengel came up short in an attempted steal of home.  Stengel was not done trying to hurt his former teammates however.  With one out in the bottom of the inning, Robinson sent pitcher Clarence Mitchell up to pinch hit for Grimes.  Mitchell hit a long fly ball to the right field where Stengel who had plenty of experience playing the difficult right field wall was waiting.  On this day, however, a new challenge had been added.  The prior Sunday, temporary seats had been erected in right field for an expected overflow crowd against the Giants.  Afterwards the seats were stacked against the right field wall, giving Stengel a new obstacle to deal with.  Casey was up to the challenge and made a "splendid catch."  The hard luck on Mitchell's part anticipated his experience in the 1920 World Series where he became the only player in World Series history to hit into an unassisted triple play - again on a hard hit ball.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle - May 4, 1920

Once the Phillies recorded the last out, the Dodger headed back for the train station after another thirteen innings  (2 hours and 6 minutes) of frustration.  Wisely, Dodger manager Robinson had left Sherry Smith, Monday's starting pitcher (along with Cadore) behind in Boston.  The next afternoon saw the Dodgers back at Braves Field once again in "threatening weather" before a crowd of about 3,000.  Dana Fillington was on the mound for the Braves and once again a classic pitcher's duel developed.  Brooklyn scored  in the fifth, but Boston matched it in the sixth and for the third consecutive day in two cities, the Dodgers were headed for extra innings.  Little happened in the extra frames until the seventeenth when the Braves Rabbit Maranville tried to end the proceedings by stealing home, but was thrown out.  Finally Boston mercifully put the Dodgers out of their misery with three straight singles in the nineteenth for a 2-1 victory.

Boston Globe - May 4, 1920

The game lasted a little over three hours so the Dodgers had played 58 innings in three days in just over 9 hours or about 10 minutes an inning.  Unsurprisingly, the three consecutive marathons set a record for innings played in three days, breaking the old record (45) perhaps also unsurprisingly set by Brooklyn in 1917.  Interestingly, just four years later, in 1924, Brooklyn would come close to breaking their own record, playing 51 innings in three days.  That came about because Brooklyn played, and won, three straight doubleheaders in Philadelphia with one extra inning game and one game going less than nine.  At the moment, however, the concern in Brooklyn was the team's offensive woes.  All told, Dodger batters went 27 for 187 in the three games, a .144 batting average.  Worst of all were Konetchy and Bernie Neis who hit just .095.  The Dodgers, in winning the 1920 National League pennant, would go on to hit .277 for the season, making a prophet of Maxwell who said that in the early season batters would hit about 50% of their normal averages. At least the Dodgers didn't have to deal with extra innings the next day. The weather gods took pity and the game was rained out!