The PawSox live on: Remembering The Longest Game

 

The Pawtucket Red Sox --- who sadly now live on only in the memories of its loyal fans --- have officially morphed into the Worcester Red Sox.
But those PawSox diehards ---- who will dearly miss hanging out at McCoy Stadium on balmy summer evenings ---- as they enjoy baseball at its purist and soak in the beautiful sunsets unique to McCoy ---- will forever consider the team now playing in Worcester as the Pawtucket Red Sox.
As such, it’s notable that this weekend represents the 40^th anniversary of what was unquestionably the most historic PawSox moment: The Longest Game, the 33-inning marathon played April 18-19, 1981 before being concluded on June 23, 1981.
Last year, with the PawSox’s final season at McCoy being a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic, The Longest Game was unsurprisingly named the No. 1 of the Top 10 PawSox moments.
I wrote about The Longest Game for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA, in this column that appeared on Monday, July 13, 2020. I’m posting it today to salute the Longest Game anniversary.

The column that appeared on Monday, July 13, 2020, in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA. (The link to the column at thesunchronicle.com: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/opinion/columns/kessler-pawsox-to-celebrate-historic-33-inning-minor-league-classic/article_3288bed1-46a7-51fb-bbe4-b3f44265b70b.html)

Before the coronavirus pandemic canceled their season, the Pawtucket Red Sox were about to mark their final year at McCoy Stadium, in advance of their move to Worcester in 2021, by celebrating the team’s 50^th year at McCoy. Those celebratory events had included the induction of The Longest Game in professional baseball history into the Pawtucket Red Sox Hall of Fame.

The Longest Game, which forever transformed the PawSox franchise, is considered one of the most historic baseball games ever played, and before the world changed, I had been scheduled to discuss the game at the North Attleboro Senior Center. That talk, of course, didn’t happen, as the senior center was closed to the public.
But even without baseball at McCoy, the game that made history 39 years ago has become current again thanks to two documentary series accessible at pawsox.com.
The first involves the PawSox counting down their Top 10 best games of all time, including The Longest Game. The weekly audio documentary series is being presented by Cox Communications and WEEI 103.7 FM. The series --- which is available as a podcast on most major platforms and is streaming at pawsox.com and radio.com --- is called “Solid Gold: Stories of the Best Games in PawSox history.”
In the second documentary, The Longest Game is being featured as part of a four-part video series, “COX Legendary PawSox Stories,” that can be viewed on pawsox.com. Both series are informing a new generation of fans about the regular-season game played in 1981 between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings, which was then the Triple A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles.
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The game was remarkable for many reasons, none more than the fact that it took two months to complete. That's right: the game began Saturday, April 18, was suspended after 4 a.m. on Sunday, April 19 and finally finished with an additional 18 minutes of baseball on Tuesday, June 23.
But that's only part of what makes The Longest Game so unique. I'd like to share with you what I learned about the game during an interview for a Sun Chronicle story that I did in 2018 with PawSox longtime executive Mike Tamburro. The former president of the team and now the current vice chairman and co-owner, Tamburro was the team's general manager in 1981, and during my interview, he offered these insights into The Longest Game:
* It was played on a cold April night, with 40 mph winds blowing straight in from right field.
* The game was delayed at the start for a half-hour because one of the light towers wasn't working.
* The game lasted 33 innings, but all of the scoring took place in just four innings:
1. The Red Wings opened up the scoring with a run in the top of the seventh to take a 1-0 lead.
2. The PawSox tied it in the ninth to make it 1-1 to push the game to extra innings.
3. Rochester went ahead 2-1 in the top of the21st inning, but the PawSox kept the marathon going by knotting it at 2-2 in the bottom of that inning.
4. The bottom of the 33^rd inning on June 23, when the PawSox won the game 3-2.
* The reason that the game dragged on all night long is linked to a vastly different era of communications before texting and cell phones. The delay in halting the game was due to a faulty mimeograph machine, which for younger readers is best described as a bulky copying machine. What happened was that the International League rules governing the league's 12:50 a.m. curfew – which mandated that no inning start after that time – was inadvertently missing from the umpires' copy of the rules, and as a result, the umpires refused to half the game without direct authorization from the league.
That forced Tamburro to spend several hours calling International League President Harold Cooper, but to no avail. Remember: that was 1981 – decades before cellphones --- so it took Tamburro until after 4 a.m. to get Cooper on the phone, and by then, 32 innings had been played. Cooper immediately suspended the game.
* The teams had a regular game scheduled Sunday, which was Easter, but since the players, and especially the pitchers, were exhausted, the decision was made to finish the suspended game on June 23 – the next time that the two rivals would meet in Pawtucket. That decision proved prudent as Sunday's game was tied 3-3 in the bottom of the ninth and would have gone into extra innings had PawSox player Sam Bowen not hit a walk-off home run.
The game, of course, ended with a PawSox win, and it's destined to remain The Longest Game, at least in the minor leagues, because the International League, starting in 2018, revised the way extra-inning games are handled. Now, from the 10^th inning on, both teams start their respective extra innings with a man on second base, making an extended extra-inning game unlikely.
Learn more about The Longest Game in the quiz that accompanies this column. One of the best books about the game is “The Longest Game” by Steven Krasner; it's suitable for all ages.
Larry Kessler is a retired Sun Chronicle local news editor. He can be reached at larrythek65@gmail.com.