50 Inning Baseball Game Spans Four Days, More Than 1K Pitches in Japan

A 50-inning baseball game between two Japanese high schools took four days to complete and a whopping 1,393 combined pitches from both team's starters, who each played the entire game.

In the United States, one would expect a game like this to be a wild, high-scoring affair with just about every player on the team taking the mound. But in this matchup, both starting pitchers for Chukyo High School and Miura Gakuen High School went the distance before Chukyo scored the only runs of the game in the 50th inning for a 3-0 victory, USA Today reported. The game started August 28.

The huge side note to the story here is that the teams were playing in a national rubber baseball tournament, using what is called a nanshiki, a ball that is lighter and doesn't travel as far as a regular baseball — cutting down on both hits and runs.

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Still, some of the game's statistics are astonishing. Chukyo's pitcher, Taiga Matsui, threw a 709-pitch shut out while Muira Gakuen's Jukiya Ishioka tossed 689 pitches and fended off any runs for 49 innings.

Most high school pitchers in America, and even college, rarely throw more than 100 pitches in a game, USA Today noted.

"This game was the physically hardest ever for me," Matsui told The Asahi Shimbun newspaper. "But I showed my fighting spirit. As my teammates scored three runs [in the 50th inning], I was able to throw in a relaxed manner in the bottom of the inning. Ishioka was a good rival for me."

Ishioka gave up a two-run double in the top of the 50th inning, which opened the door for Chukyo and would prove too much for his teammates to come back from later in the inning, according to USA Today.

"Though I was beaten in the end, it was a good experience for me to pitch until the last," Ishioka told The Asahi Shimbun. "I had fatigue not only today but also yesterday and the day before yesterday. But I asked our coach to use me as a starter today."

The longest game in professional baseball history was 33 innings played in 1981 between the Pawtucket Red Sox and Rochester Red Wings, two Triple-A International League teams.

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