Title/Author:
“Bottom of the 33rd: Hope
Redemption and Baseball’s Longest Game” by Dan Barry
Tags:
Baseball, minor leagues, history
Publish date:
April 12, 2011
Length:
259 pages
Rating:
5 of 5 stars (outstanding)
Review:
One of the beauties of baseball is
that the game has no clock – there is no set time in which a game must be
completed, such as 60 minutes for football and hockey or 48 minutes for
professional basketball. It just
requires that 9 innings be completed with one team ahead. If the teams are tied after those 9 innings,
they keep playing innings until one team is ahead.
The only time that it took 24
additional innings to decide a game was on a chilly night in Rhode Island in
April 1981. Because of a simple omission
in the league rule book, a game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and Rochester Red
Wings that began at 7:30 on the Saturday before Easter didn’t stop until after
4 AM on Easter Sunday. And THEN the game
wasn’t technically over – the two teams had played 32 innings before the
International League president was finally contacted and he said to suspend the
game. It was later concluded in the 33rd
inning on June 23 on national television as it was the biggest baseball story
of the day because the major league players were on strike.
This book by Dan Barry takes this game
and weaves so many different stories about so many different people who were
involved in the game in some manner. Of
course, the major emphasis is on players who participated. The two most recognizable names were Hall of
Famers Wade Boggs, who played third base for the Red Sox and Cal Ripken Jr.,
who also was at the hot corner for the Red Wings. While their contributions to the game didn’t
affect the final outcome, their stories were minor compared to some of the
other people.
People like Dave Koza, the Red Sox
first baseman whose story is the major focus of Barry’s prose and the reader
will get attached to him and his wife Ann, who sat in the cold stadium for the
entire game, rooting for her husband to not only get that hit, but also to get
that chance to play in the major leagues.
The history of the stadium is also
discussed in this book as are the history of the town of Pawtucket, the follies
of the team and its owners. One amusing
story is the reason why Budweiser beer was not available at McCoy Stadium. So is the plight of a young clubhouse
attendant. Determined to make the
visiting Red Wings a decent meal at the end of the game, he had a chicken and pasta
spread ready for them in the ninth inning (a big improvement over the usual
fare for post-game meals in the minor leagues) only to have it ruined as the
game kept going and going.
So many other people have stories to
share – the Red Wings general manager-turned-radio broadcaster calling all of
those innings and frequently wishing anyone listening back in Rochester a Happy
Easter. The 9 year old boy who with his
dad sat through every inning as the temperature kept dropping. And speaking of dropping temperatures, the
umpires whose hands kept turning colder because there was only one pair of
gloves to share were also prominent in the story. When they could not find the rule in the new
version of the rule book that stated an inning could not start after 12:50 AM,
their stubborn sticking to the “rules” was both admirable, confounding and
ultimately historic.
This long review barely scratches the
surface of all the wonderful stories shared in this mostly fast-paced
book. Like the game itself when players
were just trying to end it, it does start to drag near the conclusion, but this
just added to the excellence in the writing as it plays along exactly as the
game does. It is a wonderful addition to
any baseball library and is recommended for all baseball fans.
Book Format Read:
E-book (Nook)
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