ATM Correspondents

Two reports for today…Lucas Shaw is back with our very first blog preview (and he was savvy enough to even plug our products!):

Wednesday night’s match-up between the Tulsa Drillers and the Arkansas Travelers
features a top-prospect pitching duel between Greg
Reynolds and Nick
Adenhart, respectively.  Both pitchers are considered to be among the most
promising pitching prospects for their parent organizations. 

Adenhart
split the 2006 season between LA Angels affiliates Cedar Rapids Kernels of the
Midwest League and Rancho Cucamonga Quakes of the California League.  The
towering 6′ 7" Reynolds spent part of the 2006 season with the California
League’s Modesto Nuts. 

Both pitchers are starting the 2007 season
red-hot.  Adenhart is 3 -1, with a 1.70 ERA and 28 strikeouts over 37 innings. 
Reynolds, a Colorado Rockies prospect, is 2 -1 with a 1.91 ERA and 26 strikeouts
over 33 innings.

These right-handed hurlers square off at the new
Dickey-Stephens Park in Little Rock, Arkansas Wednesday night at 7:10 p.m. CST 
If you are lucky you can go to the game; the rest of us can listen to it live at
MiLB’s
Gameday Audio.

This one comes from unofficial He Said, She Said historian Phil Lowry:

One hundred sixty-nine (169) of the 511 baseball games ever lasting five hours or longer have taken place in the minor leagues. So far this year, we’ve only seen two: 5:14 at Legends Field in Tampa  April 17 as the Clearwater Threshers defeated the hometown Yanks, 4-1, in 20 innings, and 5:26 at Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi April  26 when the hometown Hooks downed the Midland RockHounds, 7-6.

Leagues experiencing the most are: Texas 27; Florida State 15;  International 12;  Eastern, Pacific Coast, and Southern 11; South  Atlantic 10; California 9; Midwest 8; Mexican and New York-Penn both 6.  Everyone knows about the Granddaddy of all such marathons: 8:25 at McCoy  Stadium in Pawtucket, RI on April 18 and June 23, 1981, as the  hometown Paw Sox beat the Rochester Red Wings,3-2, in 33  innings.

Few fans have ever heard though of two other great minor league games that also took more than eight hours: 8:15 at Athletic Stadium in Burlington, NC June 24, 1988 when the Bluefield Orioles downed the hometown Indians  3-2 in 27 innings, and 8:07 at Greer Stadium in Nashville, TN May 5 and 6,  2006 when the New Orleans Zephyrs defeated the hometown Sounds 5-4 in  24 innings.

None of these minor league games however comes close to the longest  baseball game of them all: ten hours and no minutes at Piedras Negras, in the  state of Coahuila, Mexico July 18, 1926. It was an amateur game, won  by San Luisito (of Texas) over Piedras Negras (Black Rock)  Internationals (of Mexico) 29-19.

They started at 9 AM, and the game was called  after 5 1/2 innings at 7 PM. So it took 109.1 minutes per inning. This  famous game is very well documented, but why they took SOOOO long to play  it is still a mystery.