On Saturday, May 1, 1920, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves played to a 1–1 tie in 26 innings, the most ever played in a single game in the history of Major League Baseball (MLB). The game was played at Braves Field in Boston before a crowd estimated at 4,000. Leon Cadore of Brooklyn and Joe Oeschger of Boston each pitched 26 innings, and jointly hold the record for the longest pitching appearance in MLB history.
The day of the game saw rainy weather, and it was unclear if the game would be played, but the skies cleared enough to allow it to proceed. Brooklyn scored a run in the fifth inning, and Boston in the sixth; thereafter the pitchers became increasingly dominant. As the game lengthened past eighteen innings, the small crowd at Braves Field cheered both pitchers. The last twenty innings were scoreless, and with darkness starting to fall, the umpires called a halt after the twenty-sixth inning, as there was as yet no artificial illumination of baseball fields.
There have been claims that the lengthy pitching appearance ruined the arms of Oeschger and Cadore; this was not the case as both pitched several more years in the major leagues and Oeschger won twenty games in 1921. The performance meant that they remained better known than other former major leaguers of that era. Although 25-inning games were played in the major leagues in 1974 and 1984, each team involved used several pitchers, and the records for endurance posted by Oeschger and Cadore were not threatened. Their record of 26 innings pitched in a game has been repeatedly cited as one that will never be broken.
Background
The Brooklyn Dodgers, or Robins, as they were then sometimes called after their manager, Wilbert Robinson, had won the National League title in 1916. Although they had fallen to fifth place by 1919, they were well-regarded as the 1920 season began. Leon Cadore was not the ace of Robinson's pitching staff (that role fell to Burleigh Grimes) but he had won fourteen games in 1919, his best performance to that point. On May 25, 1919, Cadore was involved in a well-known stunt, pulled by Casey Stengel, then a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates who had been traded from the Dodgers. Cadore captured a sparrow and gave it to Stengel, who placed it under his cap. Called to bat, Stengel received mixed boos and cheers from the Brooklyn crowd as a former Dodger, and doffed his cap, whereupon the bird flew away to great laughter from the crowd. Stengel later stated of Cadore, who was a roommate while both were with the Dodgers, "Wonderful person, wonderful pitcher with a brilliant mind."
The Boston Braves of 1920 were several years on from their great success, the Miracle Braves, the World Series champions of 1914, when manager George Stallings led them from last place on the Fourth of July to sweeping the 1914 World Series. The starting pitcher for the Braves on May 1, 1920, Joe Oeschger, had a 15–14 win-loss record in 1917, falling to 6–18 in 1918 and 4–4 in 1919. A year and a day before the May 1 game, Oeschger, then a member of the Philadelphia Phillies, had pitched 20 innings in a 9–9 tie with Brooklyn, with Grimes the pitcher for the Dodgers. Ties, brought on by adverse weather or the fall of darkness, were common in MLB in the time before night baseball. Later in 1919, Oeschger had been traded to the New York Giants and then to Boston. Both Oeschger and Cadone were 28-year-old right-handers.
The Dodgers had won eight of their first twelve games going into May 1, and was in second place out of eight in the National League standings, half a game behind the 1919 World Series winners, the Cincinnati Reds. Boston had a 4–5 record and was in fifth place, 3 games behind the Reds. Earlier in the 1920 season, Oeschger and Cadore had opposed each other in Brooklyn, with Cadore the winning pitcher over Oeschger, 1–0 in 11 innings.