Today is the 40th anniversary of the amazing Rick Camp game between the Mets and Braves, the wackiest, wildest, most incredible game in the history of baseball as John Sterling certified. I happened to watch it live on TV.
It had 2 rain delays, including one at the start, and went 19 innings. It included manager Davey Johnson being thrown out and Keith Hernandez hitting for the cycle with those things not even being the highlights! It ended at 3:55 AM on July 5th with 4th of July fireworks following at 4AM and waking up/scaring half the downtown residents.
If you haven’t seen it, I promise you won’t regret watching this 5 minute video:
Thanks much, Larry!
As a big baseball fan, I loved it!
Good stuff Wx, but who won the game??
joj,
Unfortunately for Camp, the Braves, and myself, the Mets scored 5 runs in the top of the 19th off of him to make it 16-11. But the Braves still didn’t give up! They scored 2 in the bottom of the 19th to make it 16-13. With runners at first and third and two out, Camp was back at bat representing the tying run!! But this time Camp struck out to end the game. Ironically, he was the losing pitcher. That just adds to the uniqueness of this twisty-turny unpredictable wild game.
Another wild thing: go to 2:15 of the video and note the 3 fans on the far right of the screen getting up to leave just before the pitch that yielded the Camp home run! This is merely another of the many notable things about this game. Of course they didn’t have enough time to walk much at all with the homer coming only 8 seconds later: