This post is being written when there is really no baseball news going on, during the Pandemic that swept over the World starting about mid-March 2020.
There’s always something you can write about baseball, and today, I was reading something on game length time, which prompted me to want to run for my Phillies Media Guide to check out the answer. Some things I’ve always loved about baseball are 1) you never know what you’ll see at the ballpark, a triple play, a cycle, perfect game, and the like 2) baseball isn’t controlled by time, so you can be there for under 2-hours, or over 4-hours, you just never know.
I was looking for the quickest game that the Phillies played for 9-innings. Specifically, I wanted to know the quickest game from 1964 to 2019. The 2020 season hasn’t even started yet, so I couldn’t include this year.
The only listing that exists in the Media Guide is indeed the Phillies’ shortest game for 9-innings. It happened on September 29, 1919. It clocked in at an amazing 51 minutes. Yes, that was for a 9-inning game, it was day game in New York at the Polo Grounds (V) against the New York Giants. For the Phillies, Lee Meadows got the loss, and Jesse Barnes got the win for NY. Below is the boxscore for the overall shortest 9-inning game the Phillies played:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NY1/NY1191909281.shtml
Ok, that’s out of the way, the shortest game was the only one listed in the Phillies Media Guide, so I dove into the Baseball-Reference website and the fantastic Play Index. I wanted the shortest game of what I’ll call the modern era – 1964 till now.
Had to sort though the tables as there were many rain shortened games, and the like that were official but didn’t go the 9-innings. I finally found what I was looking for though, the quickest game of 1964- till clocked in at 89 minutes, it happened May 4, 1977 when the Phillies were out in San Diego taking on the Padres. 10,021 was the paid attendance that night, Jim Kaat got the loss. The link below will take you to the boxscore of the game:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SDN/SDN197705040.shtml
All right, we’ll move on to the longest games (from 1964 and again 9-innings), and surprisingly, the record wasn’t established too long ago. The winner is a game that the Phillies played the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park on July 6, 2018, Phils won this one, 17-5, Edubray Ramos with the win, the official time was 4:30 or 280 minutes long. Here’s the box for that one:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT201807060.shtml
I quoted the minutes in the longest 9-inning game for good reason, just last season in 2019, the Phils almost tied the longest game. It was a game that lasted 4:29 (279 minutes) on September 8, 2019 vs. the New York Mets a 1:10 PM start at Citi Field with a 10-7 Phillies win. Ranger Suarez with a blown save and win in the same game! Check out the box score below:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN201909080.shtml
Stay tuned to the blog here for more on the longest and shortest games for the Phillies including games that didn’t go 9-innings. Follow on Twitter @fightinphillies – look at the top of the website on the main page for all social media links and follow the blog, support us by reading some ads on the site or supporting via Paypal. Good independent blogs aren’t free to maintain folks!
