Oakland emerges victorious over Yankees in 18-inning marathon
The Oakland A’s have certainly played their fair share of extra innings. Apparently a 19-inning win in April wasn’t enough free baseball for Oakland fans, so the A’s decided to take nine extra innings to win Thursday.
Robinson Cano hit a two-run home run in the first inning to put the Yankees up 2-0. The A’s tied it up in the third inning on a Seth Smith RBI double, which brought in John Jaso.
The A’s didn’t get on base again until the ninth inning when Jaso led off with a bloop single. They had runners on 1st and 3rd with one out and 2nd and 3rd with two outs, but Brandon Moss went down swinging to end the threat.
The 2-2 tie held until Nate Frieman’s broken-bat single in the 18th inning brought Jaso home to end the grueling game.
Between the two teams, seven pitchers were used. 137 batters total came to the plate, short of the season-high total of 156.
It was the longest day game ever at O.co Coliseum, but this game had nothing on some of the longest games in MLB history. It wasn’t even the longest A’s game this season — Oakland emerged victorious in 19 innings over the Los Angeles Angels in April. The A’s are the first team to have two 18+-inning games in a single season since the Washington Senators and Oakland in 1971.
The longest game ever was 26 innings between the Boston Braves and Brooklyn Dodgers in 1920. The game was called at a 1-1 tie. The longest American League game ever was a 7-6 win by the Chicago White Sox over the Milwaukee Brewers on May 8, 1984, which took a whopping 25 innings and lasted eight hours and six minutes. 44 MLB games have lasted 20 or more innings. Yikes, we all love free baseball, but even that’s a bit excessive.
