MLB baseball has had “doubleheaders” forever - although not as many recently as in the past (a doubleheader is two games played between the same teams - usually one after the other with a short break between them - one admission ticket covered both games). They were built into the schedule - usually on a Sunday afternoon. Today - they are almost always make-up games due to rainouts, and often “day-night doubleheaders” in which two admissions are charged.
Do any other sports have doubleheaders? Can you imagine two NFL, NHL, or NBA teams playing two games back to back the same day? Or watching Man U playing Liverpool twice in the same day?
My impression is that those other sports are more physically demanding, at least when played at a professional level, than baseball, which is why teams don’t typically play two games on consecutive days, let alone the same day. And that nowadays MLB players, especially pitchers, are expected to push themselves harder than in the past, which may be part of the reason doubleheaders are rarer than they used to be.
There are very few doubleheaders in the MLB schedule, under 5 the past few years. Due to rainouts, a few more are rescheduled games as travel dictates they make up rainouts while they’re in town. Most are Day/Night doubleheaders with separate tickets for each.
Back in the day, pictures would occasionally pitch both games of a doubleheader. The last time this happened was 1927 and there’s little chance it will happen again.
I imagine you mean “last time a pitcher pitched two complete games in a doubleheader”? That could be 1927 for all I know. But the last pitcher to start both games of a doubleheader was Wilbur Wood in 1973 (he was knocked out of game 1 without retiring a batter, and the manager decided to let him come back for Game 2), and a couple years before that Al Santorini of the Padres started both games of a DH as well (this had to do with platoon advantages as he was lifted after 1 batter in the first game).
It’s not uncommon at either the professional or amateur level of golf to play tournaments with 36 holes in a day. This includes US Open qualifiers.
There are T20 Cricket double headers and while those usually involve 4 different teams I’ve seen results reported where the same two teams played twice.
In college basketball in 2008, Georgia played two games in one day. During the Southeastern Conference tournament, a tornado struck the arena, and the last quarterfinal game of the night (Georgia vs. Kentucky) had to be postponed until the next day. (The tournament was moved to a smaller venue in Atlanta due to damage to the Georgia Dome.) Then Georgia had to play Mississippi State in a semifinal game later that same day. There was no chance to postpone the entire tournament, because the tournament needed to be completed by the time the NCAA tournament brackets were created.
Not two separate games, but hockey overtime going 3 extra periods isn’t that weird.
Play suffers though just as play suffers in soccer overtime. I didn’t think it’d be a great idea. Their schedules are less congested too, so less need.
I went to a Royals game in 1991 that went 18 innings. Much to my father’s dismay, they don’t reopen beer sales at any point. I wonder if they keep the beer sales going throughout the first leg of an actual doubleheader…
And they had no lights in the stadiums in those days - so all three games had to be completed by shortly after sunset. A 10 or 11 am start wouldn’t surprise me. Also - all of the mentioned triple-headers were played in September or October - meaning that sunset would have been around 6 pm or earlier.
In the NHL, at least, they only play unlimited extra (sudden-death) overtime periods in the playoffs.
Here’s a list of the longest NHL playoff games; by my count, only 54 NHL games have ever extended to more than 40 minutes (i.e., into a third overtime period). Not unheard of, certainly, but uncommon enough that it only happens about once every other year.
During the regular season, NHL overtime now consists of:
A five-minute sudden-death overtime period (NHL non-overtime periods are 20 minutes in length), played as 3-on-3 (three skaters per side, plus a goalie, instead of the usual five)
If the game is still tied after the five-minute overtime period, it proceeds to a shootout
For what it’s worth, Wood was a knuckleball pitcher – a pitch which puts less wear on the arm (and the rest of the body) than traditional pitches. In '73, he started 48 games for the White Sox; in an era of the four-man starting rotation, he started more than one out of four of the Sox’s games, and led the AL in innings pitched.
As it is, teams that play on Sunday then play the following Thursday struggle. And if a game goes into overtime, and the overtime lasts the entire period, you see quality of play drop dramatically.
You could not physically play two games in one day. You’d have people being carted off the field with exhaustion or worse.
In Rome in 2019, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic were all required to play two matches in one day due to rain delays. Particularly impressive for Federer, who was 38 at the time and won both his matches.
Despite growing up on the South Side, I didn’t see very many Sox games at a kid–we were National Leaguers and went to Wrigley much more often–but I think it’s fair to say that almost every Sox game I went to between 1971 and 1975 featured Wood at the starting pitcher. Not surprising, given how many times he was given the ball.
I do remember him beating Nolan Ryan in one game and losing to Gaylord Perry in another. I’d have to check my programs (I scored every game even as a boy and still have the scorecards) for further details, but I’m sure of those two.
He was certainly fun to watch, was ol’ Wilbur, and he had one of the most compact deliveries I ever saw.