![]() ![]() ![]() Our staffs in those days didn’t have all these bodies, there were a lot thinner staffs,” Hershiser explains. But per common practice at the time, he waited to see how the game played out first. Saturday would have been Hershiser’s day to throw a bullpen session in preparation for his scheduled Monday start. “I just remember knowing that the game could end with one swing, guys like Glenn Davis on their team,” Hershiser remembers. “I knew when I saw Hershiser come in, it was going to last a while,” Astros slugging first baseman Glenn Davis told the Houston Chronicle.ĭavis stood out on that Houston team, leading it with 34 home runs when no other Astro topped 13 that year. Hershiser, who threw seven innings the Wednesday before at home against Montreal, was called on to start the 14th inning in Houston on just two days rest. Houston used starter Jim Clancy to pitch the final five innings. The Dodgers turned to their rotation in the 12th inning, using Mike Morgan just two days after a start. Starting pitchers were much more likely to be used in relief. Collusion was rampant among major league owners, so much that teams would only carry 24 active players - the minimum allowed by the collective bargaining agreement - instead of the usual 25.Ĭovering 22 innings’ worth of pitching was a different beast 30 years ago.Pitching staffs of 12 or 13 men are the current norm. The Dodgers carried five relief pitchers on their active roster as part of a 10-man staff, which would be unthinkable today in this age of bullpen churn.Twenty-two innings is difficult to endure in any era, but consider a few things about the state of baseball in 1989: 23 game in Montreal, but on June 3 in Houston he pitched in relief. Hershiser pitched seven scoreless innings in both 22-inning games for the Dodgers in 1989. Only three games since have matched that length, and one was by those very same Dodgers later that season, a game in Montreal that is most famous for manager Tommy Lasorda having Expos mascot Youp pi ejected. Nobody has played more than 22 innings since Dodgers-Astros three decades ago. At seven hours, 14 minutes, it’s still the longest night game by time in NL history. ![]() Saturday night at the Astrodome lasted 22 innings, the longest National League game in 15 years. The Dodgers dropped the first two games of the series, then their marathon began. Hershiser wasn’t even scheduled to pitch in the four-game series in Houston, but baseball sometimes has a funny way of messing with schedules. As far as consistency, it was a better year.” “I thought ‘89 was a better year than ‘88 personally, because my ERA was only of a point higher, and I didn’t have the 59 scoreless. ![]() “The joke back then was, my team was trying to break my scoreless streak,” Hershiser recalls. But his final record was just 15-15 thanks to a brutal late-season stretch of four total runs of support in seven starts. Hershiser entered the 1989 series against the Astros with a 2.58 ERA, and would finish with a 2.31 ERA on the season, numbers nearly identical to his award-winning 1988 campaign. He won the National League Cy Young Award the year before, when he ended the season pitching a record 59 consecutive scoreless innings, then carried the Dodgers to a World Series win with a 1.05 ERA in 42⅔ October innings. Orel Hershiser was on top of the world in 1989. Here are the stories of four characters who lived through it all. The Dodgers had to play so much baseball that the only time we’ve seen anything similar since was the result of civil unrest. This ironman challenge started with a marathon game on a Saturday night against the Astros, and ended with a doubleheader on Monday in Atlanta against the Braves. In the middle of a road trip, the Dodgers played 53 innings in two cities over a three-day stretch. Thirty years ago the Dodgers ran through a gauntlet of baseball games seemingly without end, a stretch that saw a position player pitch, and 80 percent of the starting rotation either pitch in relief or play another position. ![]()
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