by David Fleitz

Comments? Send e-mail to
dlfleitz@wcnet.org

The play by play information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.

The longest game from 1995 to 2000 was played in Seattle on August 1, 2000. The Mariners beat the Red Sox on a home run by Mike Cameron in the bottom of the 19th inning. The longest game in history happened on May 1, 1920, when the Dodgers and Braves battled to a 26-inning 1-1 tie.

I was sitting in front of the TV watching the Braves and the Mets a few Sundays ago. The game was tied in the ninth, and they went into the 10th, the 11th, the 12th, the 13th ....

Dinner was ready, but the game kept going into the 14th inning. I went to the dinner table, and in my absence the Braves finally pulled the game out in the bottom of the 14th.

I hadn't seen any long extra-inning games like that in a while, so I wondered how rare a 14-inning game really is. Does it happen once or twice a year, or every few weeks? And, what percentage of games go to extra innings? Is it 5 percent, or 35 percent? The Braves have had four of them in the past nine days.

So, I went to the 1995-2000 database which has all the game scores of the last six seasons (before 2001) and also has the number of innings played.

Number of games: 13,839.

Extra-inning games: 1,194, for 8.63 percent. In those six seasons, about one game out of every 12 went to extra innings.

Games that last 14 innings or more: 83, for 0.6 percent. About one game of every 167 lasts that long, or slightly less than one per season per team.

I always figured that most of such contests would end in the 10th, but let's look at the 1,194 games:

End after 10 innings: 587

End after 11 innings: 265

End after 12 innings: 172

End after 13 innings: 87

End after 14 innings: 41

End after 15 innings: 26

End after 16 innings: 8

End after 17 innings: 6

End after 18 innings: 1

End after 19 innings: 1

Almost, but not quite, half of the extra-inning games ended in the tenth. Very few of them lasted past 12 innings.

The frequency of extra-inning games has an impact on strategy. The manager of a team has to be aware that about one game every two weeks will go past nine innings. The manager can't use all his catchers as pinch-hitters in innings 1 to 9, because he has to keep a catcher in reserve if the starting catcher gets injured and the game goes past nine. Also, the manager can't use all his pitchers in the bullpen, because the game might go long and require somebody to pitch several innings after the ninth.

If I had the data, I'd check and see if there were fewer extra-inning games in the past, but the data I have on innings played only goes back to 1979. Before 1935, when major league teams began playing night games, I'll bet there were far fewer games that went to 10 innings or more. One reason would be that more games were called after six or seven innings back then, especially the second games of doubleheaders. Sometimes, the umpire would call the game on account of darkness, and sometimes he would stop a game after nine so one team or the other could catch a train. In 1907, 30 games ended as ties; from 1995 to 2000, there were only six games that ended that way.

Another reason might be that the fields today hold up to foul weather much better than they did in the past. Players can play in a steady rain now, when they could not just 20 years ago or so.

I'll try to find data that I can check, but I'll bet that there are more extra-frame games now. Perhaps this explains why teams carry 11 or 12 pitchers now, when they had only 8 or 9 fifty years ago or more. You wonder why so many of these guys are just sitting around, but they're needed if 14 to 16 games a year go past nine innings.