Pitchers went the distance

Baseball, baseball, baseball.
Soon enough we’ll be talking about the start of another high school sports season and the National Football League will take over the nation’s consciousness. But this month the readers’ questions were reserved strictly for baseball.
They offer some lessons about perseverance, excellence and endurance. Let’s get to the answers.
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Which Major League Baseball team made the biggest comeback after the All-Star break to win its division?
—Nathan Miller,
Wanamaker

Miller asked a similar question last year when he wondered if a team had ever rallied from last place at the All-Star break to win its division. The only team to accomplish that feat in the current six-division format was the 1995 Seattle Mariners.
This question is a little tougher (I don’t have the Elias Sports Bureau at my fingertips like ESPN does), but the answer seems to be the 1978 New York Yankees.
The Bronx Bombers were never a bad team that season, but they lost 7-of-8 games to slip 14 games behind the American League East Division-leading Boston Red Sox the week after the All-Star game.
They cut their deficit in half by Aug. 1 and took the division lead in mid-September.
New York and Boston finished tied for first place, and the Yankees won the one-game playoff for the AL East title thanks in large part to Bucky Dent’s three-run home run in the seventh inning.
They went on to beat Kansas City in the American League Championship Series and then the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.
The only bigger comeback came prior to the existence of the All-Star Game, which started in 1933, from the Boston Braves.
They were 15 games out of first place on July 6 before winning 68 of their final 87 to take the National League by 10 games.
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With two 300-game winners entering the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, what are the chances of another and who do you think it will be?
—Phil Ford, Dunkirk

There will be another 300-game winner, but it may take a while.
While Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux enter the Hall of Fame this year, Randy Johnson in 2009 was the last player to join the 300-win club.
The standard answer to the “who’s next” question at one time was CC Sabathia. He won 17 games at age 20 in Cleveland and had reached 100 wins by the time he was 26.
Now 34, he’s at 208 wins. However, he’s just 3-4 this year and his season is over following knee surgery.
He could still get there if he’s able to return to form and wants to pitch into his early 40s.
But it seems unlikely as his numbers have slipped the last two years.
If Sabathia falls short, baseball fans will have to wait until the mid 2020s for even the chance at another 300-game winner. The top candidates are 28-year-old Felix Hernandez (121 wins) and 26-year-old Clayton Kershaw (89 wins).
My pick is King Felix.
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What's the most innings played in a Major League Baseball game? What is the most ever played by the Cincinnati Reds?
—Jan Simmons,
Portland

The topic was on Simmons’ mind Monday while he sat at Great American Ballpark watching the Cincinnati Reds and Arizona Diamondbacks battle in the 14th inning. (Cincinnati went on to lose 2-1 in 15 innings.)
The longest game the Reds ever played in terms of innings was a 1-0, 21-inning loss to the San Francisco Giants on Sept. 1, 1967, at Crosley Field.
The teams combined for 27 hits, but no one scored until a Dick Groat double in the top of the 21st plated Jim Ray Hart.
Cincinnati went down in order in the bottom of the inning, with Frank Linzy recording back-to-back strikeouts of Pete Rose and Johnny Edwards to end the game after five hours, 40 minutes.
The overall longest MLB game was played at a blistering pace in comparison. The Boston Braves and Brooklyn Robins finished 26 innings in less than four hours on May 1, 1920.
The result: A 1-1 tie. The game was called because of darkness and had to be replayed in its entirety later in the year.
Of a long list of mind-boggling statistics from the game, the following tops them all: Starting pitchers Leon Cadore of Brooklyn and Joe Oeschger of Boston both went the distance.