The Longest Baseball Game Ever: 33 Innings and Other Records

Baseball has no clock, so in theory a game can go on forever. A few have come close. Here are the record holders, and why games like these are now far less likely.

The longest professional game: 33 innings

The longest game in professional baseball history was played in the minor leagues, between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

• Started: the evening of April 18, 1981.
• Suspended: after 32 innings, in the early morning of April 19, with the score tied 2–2 and only a handful of fans left.
• Resumed: June 23, 1981, in front of a much bigger crowd and national media.
• Ended: Pawtucket won 3–2 in the bottom of the 33rd inning.
• Total time: about 8 hours and 25 minutes.

Two future Hall of Famers played: Wade Boggs for Pawtucket and Cal Ripken Jr. for Rochester. Artifacts from the game are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Longest MLB games

Record	Game	Details
Most innings	Brooklyn Robins vs Boston Braves, May 1, 1920	26 innings, ended 1–1, called for darkness
Longest by time	Chicago White Sox vs Milwaukee Brewers, May 8–9, 1984	25 innings, 8 hours 6 minutes over two days; White Sox won 7–6 on a Harold Baines home run
Longest World Series game	Game 3, 2018: Los Angeles Dodgers vs Boston Red Sox	18 innings, 7 hours 20 minutes; Dodgers won 3–2 on a Max Muncy walk-off home run

In the 1920 game, both starting pitchers, Leon Cadore and Joe Oeschger, pitched all 26 innings, a feat unthinkable today.

The longest games of the last decade

The 2018 World Series marathon remains the defining long game of recent years. Regular-season games of 18 or more innings still happened in the late 2010s, but they have become very rare since 2020 because of two rule changes.

Why marathon games are rarer now

• The automatic runner in extra innings. Since 2020 (made permanent in 2023), each regular-season extra inning starts with a runner on second base, so games end much sooner. The rule does not apply in the postseason.
• The pitch clock. Introduced in MLB in 2023, it cut the average nine-inning game by roughly half an hour.
• Bigger bullpens and stadium lights mean no more ties called for darkness.

How long is a normal game?

With the pitch clock, a typical nine-inning MLB game now lasts a little over two and a half hours, compared with around three hours in the early 2020s.