My Longest Game

Well, it took only 39 years at the Herald-Leader for me to experience my longest baseball game in my career: about 5 hours and 10 minutes on April 13 at Hagan Stadium at the UK vs. Vanderbilt series opener.  The game started about 6:40pm.  The worst luck (April 13th, get it?) was that UK didn’t win in this twelve-inning game, so the photo below wasn’t used.                                                                                                                         

 
(UK’s Ryan Wilkes was greeted enthusiastically by team mates after he scored one of the seventh inning’s five UK runs.  1/400th, f2.8, 80-200mm zoom, ISO 1000)
The wind-chill caused me to go to the car to get a couple of chemical hand warmers around the 7th inning.  As was said in Young Frankenstein, “It could be worse, it could be raining.”  Yep, it started raining in the 12th inning, so back to the car I went to get a raincoat in case UK tied it up in the 12th.  They didn’t, so we ran a photo of Vandy celebrating their go-ahead run (below), which I transmitted around midnight from my car.            

If Aprils continue to be this cold, I’m going to have to gear up on the cold weather wear, including buying a pair of insulated boots.  The scoreboard clock tells it all.  Well almost.  They ran out of spaces for innings. 

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