What’s fun about baseball is that the game itself creates such great stories. Like anything interesting, however, even baseball requires a storyteller who engages the reader in ways that not only report the box scores that are published in the newspapers, but one who knows, appreciates, and respects the people who are the story’s characters.
Dan Barry is such a writer. A columnist for the New York Times, and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Barry’s repertoire in Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game, expands to America’s national pastime: baseball.
Versatile enough to write about a problem with crows in Terre Haute, Indiana, or the struggle of the small town, Hooper, Nebraska, to retain its identity in a country that is ever growing larger, Barry lends his art to the personality of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where the longest baseball game in history was played.
On April 18, 1981, on the evening of Holy Saturday, the night before Easter Sunday, a minor league baseball game between the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtucket Red Sox was scheduled to start, and, to end.
It was a cold night, with the wind blowing in from the outfield, as if baseball history itself was posted there to contain the fly balls to the field of play where they could be caught routinely by players from both teams. Nothing, except the length of the game itself, was extraordinary about it.
The town of Pawtucket, pronounced "P’tucket" at the insistence of local citizens, was prepared for its day in history. A team of owners, players, equipment managers, coaches, a scorekeeper, and loyal fans, could never have imagined, or wanted, such a reason to justify being recorded in a history book.
Among the players were many who never played in a major league game, the plight of many a minor league baseball player. There were some, however, who did make a name for themselves: Cal Ripken, Jr., Wade Boggs, and Bob Ojeda, among them.
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