Brooklyn Dodgers 1, Boston Braves 1 (26 innings)
Their record is considered unbreakable, as modern pitchers rarely pitch even nine innings, and newer baseball rules have made long extra-innings games a rarity.
Although 25-inning games were played in the major leagues in 1974 and 1984, each team involved used several pitchers, and the records for endurance posted by Oeschger and Cadore were not threatened.
[3][4] On May 25, 1919, Cadore was involved in a well-known stunt, pulled by Casey Stengel, then a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates who had been traded from the Dodgers.
[17] Robinson spent his time before the game entertaining the baseball writers with tales of the old Baltimore Orioles, for whom he had played.
The Boston manager was outraged when a Brooklyn player casually walked by the home dugout, scattering peanuts to attract pigeons.
[1] At the end of the first inning, the rain stopped abruptly, leaving a cold wind which blew in from the Charles River slowing many fly balls and converting them to outs.
[3] Brooklyn center fielder Hy Myers led off the top of the second inning with a single, and advanced to second base on Pick's second error of the game.
First baseman Ed Konetchy walked, and the shortstop, Chuck Ward, hit a fly ball to left field to retire the side.
[3] Second baseman Ivy Olson batted next, and his base hit to shallow left field allowed Krueger to score.
[1][21] Krueger, the Brooklyn catcher, made the play after Cadore relayed the ball to him, but was spiked by Boeckel and had to leave the game;[22] he was replaced by Rowdy Elliott.
When darkness drew its mantle over the scene, forbidding further battle, both teams were still on their feet, interlocked in a death clutch and each praying for one more inning in which to get the knockout blow.
Nervous prostration threatened to engulf the stands as the twentieth inning passed away in the scoreless routine and the word was passed from the knowing fans to those of inferior baseball erudition that the National League record was twenty-two innings, the Robins having beat the Pirates by 6 to 5 in a game of that length played in Brooklyn on August 22, 1917.
[13][1] Cruise walked to lead off the bottom of the fifteenth, and Holke attempted a sacrifice but both men were safe, putting runners on first and second with no outs.
Consecutive groundouts by Boeckel and Maranville, each forcing a runner at third base, and a fly ball out by Gowdy, sent the game to a sixteenth inning.
Boston went in order in the bottom of the inning,[1] though Oeschger nearly won his own game with a long drive to left field that required Wheat to make a leaping catch in front of the wall.
Konetchy saw this and tried to score; he was tagged out in front of home plate by Gowdy after Holke threw the ball back to him.
"[12] Stallings did assure Oeschger, "Hold 'em, we'll get 'em next inning"; Cadore later stated that had Robinson tried to remove the Brooklyn pitcher from the game, he would have strangled his own manager.
[19] Several of the unused players on the Brooklyn bench, led by Grimes, asked their manager for the opportunity to play in the history-making marathon game.
[26] After the twenty-sixth inning, the home plate umpire, Barry McCormick, surveyed the increasing darkness on the field and consulted with the two managers.
[32] On May 8, 1984, the Chicago White Sox used eight pitchers to defeat the Milwaukee Brewers (who used six), 7–6; Chuck Porter went the longest, pitching 71⁄3 innings.
[37] According to Warren Corbett of the Society for American Baseball Research, writing in 2015, "Today a 26-inning complete game seems preposterous, not to mention abusive.
[38] Cadore's twelve assists in an MLB game by a pitcher tied a record set by Nick Altrock of the White Sox in 1908; no one has ever broken it.
[40] Those putouts, together with Holke's assist in the 1–2–3–2 double play in the seventeenth inning, gave him 43 total chances, also an MLB record for a first baseman.
[1][41] In addition to the hometown Boston reporters, only Eddie Murphy of the New York Sun and Tommy Rice of the Brooklyn Eagle had covered the game.
[25] Despite their efforts, the game was overshadowed in the headlines because on May 1, Babe Ruth hit his first home run as a member of the New York Yankees.
"[19] Also on May 2, National League president John Heydler sent both pitchers congratulatory messages, especially expressing his pleasure that the pitching feat had taken place under baseball's new rules, that banned the spitball.
[46] Cadore died in 1958 at age 66, having played most of his MLB career with the Dodgers, with brief stints with the Chicago White Sox and New York Giants, compiling a lifetime record of 68–72.
"[47] According to his obituary, his 26-inning performance "lifted Cadore from the comparative obscurity of 'an old major leaguer' to fame forever in one of the great pitching feats of all time".
[47] Sportswriter Bert Randolph Sugar wrote, "for Cadore and Oeschger, [the May 1 game] would so intertwine their names that they would forever be known in tandem".
[51] According to the Los Angeles Times, neither pitcher ever seemed too impressed by their feat; as Oeschger put it, "a 1–1 contest that goes 26 innings must have been dull to watch".
