St. Louis reclaims record, raises $150,000
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| 52 players from St. Louis played base ball for over 60 hours from July 3 to July 5 and set a new Guinness record for the longest baseball game. The event raised money for The Backstoppers, a St. Louis based charity that provides financial and other support to the families of fallen police, fire and emerency workers. |
Play and play and play and play and play and play ball...
By Jeff McGaw, MSBLNational.com
Players in rally hats at T.R. Hughes Field in O'Fallon, Mo. cheered and clapped with youthful vigor and marinated themselves in the final moments of the baseball game on July 5, but this was no ordinary game.
This game was in the 169th inning – 160 innings past ordinary -- and in its 61st hour and the score was 249-202.
It didn't seem to matter. "They all just turned into these 10-year-old kids,” said St. Louis MSBL player Chuck Williams who helped organize the baseball marathon along with Steve Pona.
Sleep deprived, sweltering in triple digits, and fatigued from cramming a season's worth of baseball into 60 hours, 52 mostly middle-aged players pitched, hit, and threw their way into the Guinness Book of World Records – again.
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For the third time since 2007 a band of ballers from St. Louis successfully set the official Guinness Record for the most continuous hours of baseball. In doing so, they raised about $150,000 for The Backstoppers Inc. – a St. Louis-based non-profit that gives financial and other support to the spouses and kids of police officers, firefighters and emergency responders killed in the line of duty from all over Missouri and Illinois. To honor those many heroes, players wore patches on their uniforms from police, fire and EMS companies across Missouri and Illinois. |
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| The organization is dear to folks like St. Louis |
"We wanted to set the record apart" Chuck Williams, event co-coordinator. |
MSBL President Mike Martin, a Maplewood, Mo., police officer who knows the dangers of police well. He was shot, and survived, in 2008.
Martin joined Williams, co-director Pona, Jeff Lange, Jim Hoffman, and Todd Hinderliter, as he only players to have played in all three record setting games in St. Louis.
The new record – 60 hours, 11 minutes, 32 seconds -- eclipsed by 12 hours the previous record set on July 11, 2011 in Barre Town, Vermont.
"We are really proud of it,” said Williams,” a professional musician and MSBL player. "We're a little bit baseball snobbish about it. (St. Louis) has all the other sports, but it's always going to be a baseball town. After you have 11 world championships you're always talking Cardinals. Baseball is everywhere. When we set the record and saw someone else take it, we wanted it back.”
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The group of 52 players – 12 more than allowed in previous attempts at the Guinness record -- divided into teams of 26 players. Those teams then divided into groups of 13 and took turns playing every three hours. They walked willingly into saturating heat and self-imposed jet lag. "The guys knew what they were up against.” Williams said.
Traube Tents, one of the team sponsors, pitched a large, air-conditioned tent where players could relax. Another company trucked in fresh fruit for players to snack on. Some players had recreational vehicles. Players were not allowed to go home and rest. All had to stay on the grounds except for one player who broke his foot rounding third base.
He was taken to the hospital. |
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| "We'd eat, and crash,” Williams said, but as tired as people were, "a lot of guys found they just couldn't sleep |
Organizers Steve Pona (Left), and Chuck Williams (Right) and in the middle Chief Ron Battelle of the BackStoppers Organization |
. You're hearing the bat and ball and fans and you want to sit up and you wonder what's going on,” Williams said. "It's the strangest thing trying to go to sleep next to a game.”
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The St. Louis players, led by Williams and Pona, are arguably the most ambitious fund raisers in the entire MSBL Nation. They raised $100,000 for the Gene Slays Boys Club, a St. Louis when they set the Guinness record in 2007. When they reclaimed the record from Long Island in October 2009 they raised $150,000 for the Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center in St. Louis.
Williams and Pona don't limit their fund raising efforts to baseball. In March they organized and participated in a 112-hour, Guinness Record-setting basketball game at the Missouri Athletic Club. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done,” Williams said. That effort raised $125,000 to help rebuild Joplin Mo., after the deadly tornadoes of May, 2011.
Williams hopes the new St. Louis baseball record will last for a while. "We wanted to set the record apart,” he said. Sixty hours, he said, "just seemed like the right number.” |
| At one point all but the infield lights were turned off to accommodate a local fireworks show. |
In the end, Team Traube Tent squeaked past Team Leibe Lettering 249-202. |
Players on average had about 40 plate appearances during the game -- a season's worth of at-bats for players in most amateur adult baseball leagues like the MSBL.
The game's hitting star was 26-year 0ld Matt Savoie of Carlinville Ill. led all hitters with 31 hits in 34 official at bats for a .912 average. He also walked and was hit by a pitch. Andy Dickinson, 34, of Ballwin, Mo., batted .447 (17x38) and scored a game high 19 runs. Brian Klimaski, 31, of St. Charles Mo., had 15 RBI on the day to top all hitters.
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In the aftermath of the marathon were the grungy uniforms, sore feet, and aching muscles that adult baseball league players are familiar with, as well as mangled sleep cycles, memory lapses, attention deficits and other fallout from sleep deprivation.
"Now that we've done a few of these you know you're not going to be right for awhile afterward. |
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St. Louis Dispatch sports writer Derrick Goold made the game's last out. |
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body for a few days.” When compared to the price paid by families of fallen police, fire and emergency response workers, Williams said "it's a small price to pay.” |
| A tired baseball marathoner beats the heat in one of several kiddie pools set up at T.R. Hughes Field. The players battled triple digit temperatures during their record-setting game. |
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