The Longest and Shortest Major League Baseball Games

Base­ball, in this day and age, can seem to take an eter­nity to watch. Espe­cially if you’re going into the 8th with a 0–0 tie on your hands. But the longest base­ball game in major league play was played between the Chicago White Sox and Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The game started on May 9, 1984, and because of MLB rules, the teams had to quit play­ing at 12:59 am of May 10, so the teams came back the next day to fin­ish what they’d started the day before. All in all, the game lasted 8 hours and 6 min­utes, with a final score of 7–6 in 25 innings. The White Sox won, by the way, on a home run by right fielder Harold Baines. The short­est MLB game on record took place on Sep­tem­ber 28, 1919 between the New York Giants and the Philadel­phia Phillies at the Baker Bowl in Philadel­phia. It took the Giants only 51 min­utes to beat the Phillies, 6–1.¹

1. This infor­ma­tion can be found almost any­where on the Inter­net, but for more infor­ma­tion you can check out the amaz­ingly com­pre­hen­sive Base­ball Almanac. [↩]