My Longest Game

[moblue]

I called a game for a city league 10 yr. old tournament tonight. We reached the 2 hour time limit in the 5th inning. The visitors had proceded to blow their 11-0 lead and we ended up with a 14 - 14 ballgame after 5. Since this was a tournament we couldn't declare a tie and ended up going... 3:45. The final score was 17-18 after 9 innings. For some reason I am more exhausted after that than if I had called 2 games.

[kcfan102]

Was there no ITB?

3:45 is suicidal length.

[moblue]

Sorry, what's ITB?

[kcfan102]

International tie breaker, sometimes called California tie breaker (I don't know why).

It's a way of preventing 3+ hour long games.

It's different everywhere you go (it even varies from town to town in metro KC) but the way we play, after regulation (time limit or innings) we stick the last out of the previous inning on second base with nobody out and tell them to play on. This encourages scoring and keeps tournament games from throwing everything off.

We don't do it for any league games or championship games during tourneys.

[cnelsoGA1]

I feel your pain. In my first year doing high school ball, I had a 2 hour, 3 inning affair with the final score at 31-2. Hardly a week later, I had a 7 inning, 4.5 hour game. Final score of 8-5...

[Replacematt]

Hardly a week later, I had a 7 inning, 4.5 hour game. Final score of 8-5...

How, pray tell, did you pull this one off? Even if every inning there were 3 LOB, you still would have had an average plate appearance of 2'50".

[cnelsoGA1]

Sorry, it was actually 4 hours now that I think about it. Bout a 35ish min lightning delay, and just an unbelievably slow game. Coaches in and out a dozen times, quite literally one of the slowest games I've ever expierenced on any side of the field.

[Umpire in Chief]

My longest was about 4:30 but it was 14 innings in a Sr. Legion game. The thing was we were cruising to a 10RR, the VC starts squawking about my zone, we went back and forth and I ended up dumping him.

Well that fired up his team and they came back. The HC was now on my a$$ saying I had changed my zone after the EJ. The next few innings nobody liked me.

In the 14th inning on a banger at second my partner (who had no issues the whole game) makes a call and the assistant coach yells "Well at least you got one call right today!"

My partner yells back, "Here's another good one!" and then does his ejection mechanic.

Luckily that run scored putting the game out of our misery.

[mstaylor]

Probably the longest single game was 4.0 hrs. It was a 7 inning city championship and I was on the plate. The guuy I had on second was decent if he wasn't listening to his father, a longtime Smitty. Well he was turned sideways in C like his father insisted he do. I had told him repeatedly it would get him hit because his first to was straight back to nowhere. Ball going through the middle, hits him, kills the R2 from advancing, which should have been the winning run. 14 innings that sucker went.

[yawetag]

That, my friends, is a 3-hour solo game. It only made it 4 innings (if not, 3).

[BT_Blue]

Had a 2.5 inning party that only went THREE INNINGS while I was visiting Sydney, Australia! It involved the EJs of the head cat wrangler, the assistant cat wrangler, the shortstop, Justin Beiber and catcher... all of one team. Oddest thing for me and my partner was that this was supposed to have been a 14U party and 90% of the players from this team DROVE THEMSELVES!!!

As for the tiebreaker rule. I have seen it mainly in softball and in USSSA games and other kinds of travel testie. Also most of the time it involves the last ham sandwich being placed on second with ONE ham sandwich in the inning. At least thats what I have seen.

Edited April 1, 2012 by BT_Blue