Heading into overtime

Opinion

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This article was published 20/09/2017 (2403 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg Goldeyes fans got a lot more than they bargained for Monday night at Shaw Park.

Not only did their hometown heroes pull off an epic comeback in Game 4 of the American Association’s championship series, but they almost squeezed two full games into a single night of baseball.

The Wichita Wingnuts were clinging to a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning and were just one out away from claiming the second title in franchise history.

That’s when Goldeyes second baseman Casey Turgeon grounded out to third, ending the game and the series and prompting the Wingnuts to pour out of their dugout in celebration.

There was one problem, however — the game wasn’t over. Home-plate umpire Joe Stegner had called a balk — basically an illegal pitch — on the Wichita pitcher, meaning the Fish were still alive.

Turgeon took advantage of his new lease on life by crushing a two-out double that sent the game into extra innings. More than three hours later — just after 1 a.m. Tuesday — the Goldeyes walked it off in the bottom of the 17th to keep their season alive.

Clocking in at five hours and 59 minutes, it was the longest game in American Association history, breaking the previous record of five hours and 25 minutes set in July by the Goldeyes and the Kansas City T-Bones.

The marathon baseball battle puts the local side in historic company, as we can see from today’s time-consuming list of Five of the Longest Matches in Sports History:

 

5) The sport: Cricket

The tired titans: England versus South Africa (1939)

Clocking in: For the uninitiated, cricket is a sport wherein games seemingly last forever. Some critics suggest you shouldn’t consider an activity a sport if fans are able to return a library book in mid-match without missing anything important. For fans, however… well, the games are still pretty (bad word) long.

But when it comes to long, nothing holds a candle to the 1939 test match between England and South Africa in Durban. It turned out to be the longest cricket match ever played.

At the time, England was touring South Africa and the last of five matches was known as a “Timeless Test,” meaning it would continue until a winner was decided. Back then, the English and the South Africans were intense cricket rivals.

The Timeless Test began on March 3 and ran until March 14, featuring nine days of play spread over 12 days thanks to torrential downpours. For those of you who understand cricket, here’s a taste of the action from sportskeeda.com: “England went all guns blazing and put up one of the longest batting displays in the history of the sport. England batted for six days in total, with a rest day and a heavy rain day included. On the 10th day, England had garnered a total of 654/5 and were only 42 runs shy of the target.”

Following the action proved a bit tiresome, with one weary fan telling an English newspaper on Day 5: “Sir, no matter how important the match, batting of this dreary description can by no feat of imagination be called cricket. It is merely a certain cure for sleeplessness.”

After 12 days, with no result in sight, the captains of both teams decided to declare the match an anticlimactic draw. Why didn’t they keep playing? Because the English side had to catch their boat back home.

 

4) The sport: Tennis

The tired titans: John Isner versus Nicolas Mahut 

Clocking in: On the second day of the 2010 Wimbledon Championships, American Jon Isner, the 23rd seed, squared off against French qualifier Nicolas Mahut in what was expected to be a fairly mundane match.

It began at 6:13 p.m. on June 22 on Court 18, and at 9:07 p.m., thanks to the fading light, play was suspended before the start of the fifth and final set. The pair went back at it the next day at 2:05 p.m. and, once again with the light fading, play was suspended at 9:09 p.m. with the final set tied at 59 games. “We want more! We want more!” spectators chanted as play was suspended for the second day.

In the end, this epic match lasted 11 hours and five minutes, featuring a whopping 183 games over three rain-interrupted days in what easily became the longest match in tennis history. The new record was four hours and 32 minutes longer than the previous longest game.

On the third day, at 4:47 p.m., a weary Isner eventually triumphed 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68 in a battle that ripped up the game’s record books. In fact, the final set, clocking in at a stunning eight hours and 11 minutes, was longer on its own than any previous match in Wimbledon history.

In recognition of their record-breaking efforts, the tired tennis players were honoured with a crystal bowl and champagne flutes by the All England Club. Mahut was gracious in defeat, saying: “It was really an honour to play the greatest match ever at the greatest place for tennis.”

After being ousted from the tournament in the second round, Isner sighed: “I’ll watch sports… I’ll go fishing, I’ll do whatever. Just anything away from the tennis court.”

 

 

3) The sport: Olympic wrestling

The tired titans: Martin Klein versus Alfred Asikainen

Clocking in: As any couch potato can tell you, watching wrestling on TV while relaxing in your den can be a physically exhausting activity. So imagine how much more tired you would be if you spent 11 hours and 40 minutes grappling with another size-large lunkhead on a blisteringly hot day in an outdoor stadium. That’s exactly what Estonian wrestler Martin Klein and Finland’s Alfred Asikainen did at the 1912 Summer Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden.

Not surprisingly, there was something of a political subplot to their semifinal matchup. Klein was Estonian but chose to compete for the Russian Empire. In a bid to supplement his factory worker’s pay, he’d signed up to be a night-shift guard for a wrestling club in St. Petersburg, which led to his introduction to the sport.  In contrast, Asikainen was the defending world champion, having topped the podium at the 1911 world championships.

Much to the chagrin of Russia, which held dominion over Finland, the Finns were allowed to fly their own flag at the Games. “So when the two wrestlers met in the semifinals in the middleweight category, neither wanted to let their respective motherlands down,” according to a report on epic sports battles on CNN’s website. To say this pair gave it their all is something of an understatement.

After 11 hours and 40 minutes, Klein finally managed to pin his Finnish opponent. But the victory came at a heavy price. The Russian/Estonian was so exhausted by the match — the longest bout ever recorded in wrestling history — that he was simply too tired to wrestle for the gold medal the following day, which allowed Swedish wrestler Claes Johansson, whose only loss had been to the Finn, to claim the gold uncontested.

“Asikainen, on the other hand, returned home a nationalist hero,” CNN reports.

 

2) The sport: Hockey

The tired titans: The Montreal Maroons versus the Detroit Red Wings

Clocking in: Our Canadian citizenship would likely be revoked if we didn’t recognize the longest NHL game in history. And angry mobs bearing pitchforks and torches would descend on our home if we didn’t point out that that marathon hockey game was ended by a goal scored by a Winnipeg kid.

It was March 24, 1936, and the Detroit Red Wings were playing the now-departed Montreal Maroons in Game 1 of their five-game Stanley Cup semifinal series. The game began on March 24 and didn’t end until 2:25 a.m. the following morning after nine (bad word) periods of hockey, including six overtime periods. All in all, the game lasted a mind-numbing 176 minutes and 30 seconds, which means the winning goal did not come until after 116 minutes and 30 seconds of OT.

The unlikely hero was a 21-year-old rookie forward named Modere Fernand “Mud” Bruneteau, a St. Boniface kid who was the youngest player on the ice and scored this marathon game’s only goal to seal the victory for Detroit. Mud had only been called up two weeks before and was struggling to adjust when he was tossed into his first playoff series.

In their ninth period of scoreless hockey, the skaters on both squads were growing weary, meaning they needed to get fresh legs on the ice. At the 16-minute mark of the sixth overtime, Bruneteau made a centring pass to teammate Hec Kilrea, who broke in on Montreal’s defence, faked a return pass, then slid the puck behind the defence.

Recalls RedWingLegends.com: “Bruneteau swept in behind the defencemen and, in far from classic fashion, banged home the loose puck in front of Montreal goalie Lorne Chabot. The rookie won the game and became immortalized forever as a hockey legend.”

Chirped the kid called Mud: “Thank God! Chabot fell down as I drove it in the net. It’s the funniest thing. The puck just stuck there in the twine and didn’t fall on the ice.”

Detroit went on to win their first Cup. And Mud became the answer to a hockey trivia question.

 

1) The sport: The Olympic marathon

The tired titan: Shiso Kanakuri

Clocking in: Most athletic events are timed with high-tech clocks and stopwatches. But the No. 1 event on today’s list of famously long sporting activities had to be timed with a calendar — more than 50 of them, to be precise.  Back in 1912, a 20-year-old long-distance runner named Shiso Kanakuri became one of just two athletes representing Japan at its very first Olympics, the Summer Games in Stockholm.

By all accounts, the day of the marathon was a scorcher, with most of the 68 runners draping their heads in towels to deal with the 32 C heat. And there was Kanakuri wearing tabi, the two-toed canvas shoes typically worn by Japanese construction workers.

At the 27-kilometre mark, he collapsed from the heat and was taken to the home of local residents who cared for him. The dispirited runner withdrew from the race but didn’t notify race officials, who officially listed him as “missing.” In his diary, he lamented bringing “shame” to his countrymen.

In a twist worthy of Hollywood, in 1967, when Kanakuri was 75 years old, the so-called “missing marathoner” received a special invitation — the Swedish National Olympic Committee wanted him to return to Stockholm to participate in the 55th anniversary celebrations of the 1912 Games, and finish the race he’d been forced to abandon so many years ago.

“Judging by press reports of the proceedings, the elderly gent was only too happy to oblige, running jovially around the last corner before charging through a special ribbon,” recalls the Japan Times. “His time was promptly read out — 54 years, eight months, six days, five hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds.”

Of his impressively long time, Kanakuri, now considered the “father of marathon” in Japan, happily joked: “It was a long trip. Along the way, I got married, had six children and 10 grandchildren.”

We hate to brag, but we are confident we could beat Kanakuri’s 54-year marathon time — but that would involve getting off the couch in the den, so we’re going to take a pass.

 

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca