Didn’t you see A League of Their Own? “There’s no tying in baseball!”
Let me find a cite. The only time a game is suspended is if play is halted in the middle of an inning (after the 5th) and the visiting team has either tied the score or taken the lead, and the home team has not completed its half of an inning.
Otherwise (after 5) the game is complete, and the winner wins. If the score is tied, it is a tie game with the stats counting…
There used to be a curfew in the AL, but that rule has since been dispensed with. Teams will play until the cows come home. However, if a game is delayed by rain after 1 am, the umpires will suspend the game.
There used to be more curfews because teams had to catch a train or plane to get somewhere, but with all teams flying charters now, those have disappeared.
The ties in Japanese baseball aren’t because the Japanese want tie games or feel they are more humane. They’re a matter of being practical since about 95% of all fans at a game in Japan gets there on public transportation and trains/subways/buses don’t run much after midnight in Japan.
A tie. It’s like kissing your sister.
What you remember was a single game (no doubleheader, but two contests’ worth of action) which went 19 innings. The year was 1985. Although the Braves lost, their pitcher Rick Camp (who had a .060 lifetime average but was forced to bat because no position players were left on the bench) provided the highlight when he hit his first major-league homer to reknot the score in the eighteenth, only to surrender five runs in the next frame and get tagged with the loss.
They could have just played it out under the existing rules of baseball, which would mean that one team would eventually forfeit when they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, put nine men on the field. What they shouldn’t have done is cancel all the post-game ceremonies, not award the MVP, and slink out of the ballpark like thieves in the night, but that’s what they did.
Each pitcher in the game had pitched two innings when the game was halted. Cy Young used to pitch both ends of a doubleheader.
Asking modern pitchers who have access to top conditioning methods and who make millions per year to pitch a few more innings is not too much to ask. That is what irritated the fans the most. Here you have well-conditioned athletes playing a kid’s game for a great living and they can’t be asked to complete the game because they might hurt themselves by overextending.
It was bogus then and now. If it was a bunch of guys playing an exhibition softball game in Podunk, Middle America, they would compete until it was over even if it killed them. That is baseball, but these guys today had to be up early in the morning to run to the bank and cash another six figure paycheck.
Oh, please. Cy Young pitched in 1902, not 2002. Pitching was different – you could pace yourself – and Young wasn’t expected to hit 90+ mph on his fastball, nor did he have to worry about someone taking a bad pitch out of the park. A great pitcher, but the game was different then.
The players themselves – who, after all, know their own limitations and conditioning routines – didn’t see a problem ending it. What exactly do you know about how the players go about conditioning? Have you ever tried to follow a regimen like theirs?
If you think it’s so easy playing MLB, you do it.
A bunch of guys playing an exhibition softball game aren’t pros. If they hurt themselves, they can go back to their day jobs and continue with their careers. If a baseball player is injured, then he’s no good to the team (BTW, see “Dizzy Dean” if you’re so gung ho on ballplayers going all out in All-Star Games). If Padilla blew out a rotator cuff pitching an extra inning, do you really think the Phillies fans would have loved paying his salary until he got better?
Everyone complains that ballplayers get too much money, but I’ve never heard a fan say “Well, our team is in the cellar again, but at least they kept the payroll down.”
My ignorance fought. Thank you.
That’s it. According to Wiki, “The earliest known use of the phrase was by Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz after a scoreless tie against Duke in 1953.”
I thought it was “There’s no girls in baseball!” Mr. Baseball had Tom Selleck complaining “A baseball game can’t end in a tie!”
I think the real question is, “Why the hell would anyone else allow ties?”
The umpires used to wear ties sometimes.
I wonder what his sister thought about that.
She probably punched him in the nose when she saw him at Thanksgiving. He was fit to be tied.
And the new rule comes into play–the Orioles and White Sox, suspended after 11 innings today. Before 2007 it would have been a tie. As it is, it will get picked up in the 12th inning, probably in Baltimore in August . . . when half the rosters will have changed!
I think the worst thing about extra inning games is that they stop selling beer some time near the 8th inning. I really can’t imagine surviving a 21 inning game under those circumstances.
I think most games that can end in a tie have a clock. Baseball has no clock, therefore no ties.
But the answer to the OP’s question, of couse, is because IT’S BASEBALL!!!
That was an issue in the NBA this year, when the Heat lost Shaquille O’Neal after a game was suspended, but before the make-up date.