Baseball, unlike other sports, has no boundary of time. On June 24, 1962, the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers issued a reminder at Tiger Stadium. It took 22 innings, seven hours; an epic test of endurance inched the players toward completing the contest, which ended in a 9-7 Yankee victory. At the time, it was the longest game in elapsed time, a record that has since been broken.
43 players participated—21 Yankees, 22 Tigers. Each team used seven pitchers. Yankee second baseman Bobby Richardson had the most at bats (11), Tiger left fielder Rocky Colavito had the most hits (7), and Yankee third baseman Clete Boyer and Tiger right fielder Purnal Goldy tied for the most RBI (3).
Jack Reed punctured the standoff with a two-run homer, his only round-tripper in a three-year career. Reed’s smash came off Phil Regan, “a righthander with a herky-jerk delivery,” as described by Tommy Holmes of the New York Herald-Tribune.
A replacement for Mickey Mantle in the later innings of Yankee games, Reed had a career batting average of .233 through 222 games.
In his “Ward to the Wise” column in the New York Daily News on April 18, 1963, Gene Ward highlighted Reed, with the subtitle “The Unknown Yankee.” “It doesn’t seem possible a man can play with the Yankees and remain an unknown,” wrote Ward. “But the 30-year-old Reed, in his 10th year with the organization, is unknown only in the sense that kids don’t gang up on him for autographs and his name isn’t emblazoned in headlines. He never has been a regular, although he appeared in 88 games last year, compiling a .302 BA, and his chances to play come only when Mantle or Maris turn up ailing.
“But as far as the Yankee brass is concerned, and [Yankee manager Ralph] Houk in particular, Reed is a known and valuable quantity.”
Indeed, Houk offered high praise about Reed’s baseball skills. Intangibles received equal acclaim. “He’s a college graduate and highly intelligent. He likes to talk baseball. I never receive bad reports on him and he never gripes. He’ll pitch batting practice and he’ll take second infield,” said the Yankees skipper.
Reed’s dedication was apparent. Ward quoted, “It’s a privilege to work for an organization like this and to play under a man like Mr. Houk,” said the man who wore #27 in pinstripes.
Five years after Reed homered into baseball history, Joe Falls of the Detroit Free Press revealed that the marathon game’s seven-hour length benefited from a slight nudge. As the game’s official scorer, Falls held the power to change history. And so he did.
In his April 1, 1967 column, subtitled “A Writer Discovers That Fame’s Fleeting,” Falls described looking at the clock after Reed’s dinger—it appeared to show 8:29 p.m., which gave the game a length of six hours, 59 minutes. “But my clever little mind was still working sharply,” wrote Falls. “I figured: ‘Who’ll ever remember 6:59 as the longest game in baseball history.
“So I shouted out the time. ‘Seven hours!’ All the guys applauded.”
A version of this article appeared on www.thesportspost.com on February 15, 2016.