A Hundred Years Ago Today - Major League Baseball's Longest Game

While the 2020 baseball season will definitely be like no other, when, or if, the games finally begin, there will be at least one thing in common with past seasons.  Similar to the beginning of every other season going back to the beginning of organized baseball, fans will be optimistic about their club's chances.  That was certainly the case a century ago when the Brooklyn Dodgers opened the 1920 season.  Looking to give local fans some objective basis for their hopes, Tom Rice of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, turned to Robert "Tiny" Maxwell of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, who, after seeing every team play in spring training, proclaimed Brooklyn a legitimate "dark horse" threat.  Perhaps better remembered as a football player and official, (the Maxwell Trophy is named in his memory) the Philadelphia scribe, who was anything but tiny, favored the Dodgers because of their strong pitching staff.   Maxwell thought Brooklyn would have an extra advantage early in the season when, in his opinion, hitters were only 50% as effective as they would be in June and July.    Unfortunately for the Dodgers, however, that premise was a twin edged sword since pitchers, no matter how talented, need some run support, a point which would be proven beyond all doubt the first weekend in May of 1920.

Boston Herald - May 2, 1920

One hundred years ago, this very day, the Dodgers were in Boston for the second game of a four game series which was sandwiched around Brooklyn's first one game home stand of the season.  The pitching matchup was between Leon Cadore of the Dodgers and Joe Oeschger of the Braves, two pitchers about to go where no pitcher has ever gone, before or since.  While the weather was threatening, the game went ahead before 2,500 to 4,000 fans who Rice described as both "frozen and damp."  After four scoreless innings, the Dodgers got on the scoreboard in the fifth when Ivy Olson drove in Ernie Krueger with the game's first run.  Boston matched that in the bottom of the sixth with a rally that featured a single, a double and a triple, but only one run.  The Braves could have had at least one more run, but Tony Boeckel of Boston was thrown out at the plate on Rabbit Maranville's double.  The play was apparently something less than a work of art, however. Ed Cunningham of the Boston Herald  claimed Wally Hood's throw from center was headed for the Braves dugout until Cadore intercepted it and threw out Boeckel at home.

The game remained tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth, but Boston put runners on second and third with only one out.  After walking the next hitter intentionally, Cadore got out of the inning when second baseman Olson converted Charlie Pick's ground ball into an inning ending double play.  According to Cunningham, the play "happened so quickly everyone was dazed." While Cadore had allowed only one run, his effort thus far hadn't been especially noteworthy since Boston had a runner on base every inning, thanks to eleven hits and one walk.  Even so, with any kind of offensive production, the Brooklyn pitcher would have been celebrating a a win, but in a snapshot of the entire weekend the Dodgers had managed only six hits and one run off of Oeschger.  The Boston pitcher had to have been equally frustrated and doubtless remembered that just a year and a day earlier, as a member of the Phillies, he had pitched a twenty inning tie game against Brooklyn.  And, as Oeschger may have feared, history repeated itself for the remainder of that long, long game.

Boston Globe - May 3, 1920

After five scoreless extra innings, Boston threatened to win in the bottom of the fifteenth, but couldn't push a run across.  Brooklyn's best chance came in the top of the seventeenth when they had first and third and only one out, but Boston turned in a rally killing double play of their own.  Brooklyn's Chuck Ward grounded to Maranville at short who threw out Zack Wheat at home, but Hank Gowdy's throw to first was wild and Walter Holke could only knock it down.  When Ed Konetchy tried to score on the play, Holke's return throw home was off to one side, but Gowdy caught it and "recklessly hurled himself across the plate" with the ball in his bare hand to tag Konetchy's "gleaming spikes."  With perhaps understandable hyperbole, Cunningham called it the "the greatest play ever staged on a Boston diamond."  As disappointed as he probably was, Rice graciously admitted it was "a hair raising double play." And so the game rolled on.  Many years later, one sportswriter remembered that after the eighteenth or nineteenth inning, both pitchers understandably stopped taking any warm up pitches.  In spite of the bad weather James O'Leary of the Boston Globe claimed the small crowd remained in their seats and from the eighteenth on, cheered both pitchers as they left the mound after another scoreless inning.

Boston Globe - May 2, 1920

Finally after the Braves went out in the bottom of the twenty-sixth inning, umpire Barry McCormick called the game despite the pleas of  the Dodgers Ivy Olson who begged to play one more inning supposedly because he wanted to be able to say he had played three games in one day.  Incredibly after allowing 11 hits in the first nine innings, Cadore only gave up two in the last twelve while Oeschger was even better, pitching a no-hitter for the last nine innings.  A few days later, Cadore attributed their extra inning dominance to a combination of greater focus when one bad pitch could lose the game and batters who were over anxious for the same reason.  The twenty-six innings broke the prior record for extra inning games, a 1906, twenty-four inning affair, a new record that has never been broken. Most modern discussion of "longest" games tends to focus on time elapsed rather than innings played.  Perhaps making the 1920 game even more impressive a century later is that it took only 3 hours and 50 minutes to play almost three games.  Cadore also tied the record for assists by a pitcher with 12, matching Nick Altrock's performance in a 1908 ten inning game.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle - May 2, 1920

How did pitching twenty-six innings effect the two pitchers?  Cadore didn't pitch again until May 9th when he threw four shutout innings against the Phillies, but was knocked out in the fifth.  Given another extended rest, Cadore was back on form on May 21st when he shut out the defending champion Cincinnati Reds.  The right hander proved to be an important part of Brooklyn's pennant winning pitching staff, going 15-14 with a 2.62 ERA.  Oeschger seemed to suffer the greater short term impact as he was knocked out in each of his next two starts before recovering to go 15-13 with a 3.46 ERA.  A year later, the Boston pitcher won 20 games, by far the best season of his career.  Interestingly both pitchers long term performance was basically the same before and after 1920.  Cadore was 28-27 before 1920 and 25-31 afterwards while Oeschger was 31-44 and then 36-49.   While there were no winners that cold May afternoon, at least the Boston players headed to their hotel rooms or boarding houses knowing that they had the next day off due to the prohibition on Sunday baseball in Massachusetts.  Not so fortunate were the Brooklyn players who headed for the train station and the overnight ride to New York City for part two of their lost weekend.  Stay tuned.