[chucksabr]

Twenty Four Innings and Two Months Later,
a Weird Win for Coventry City

Baseball is a game of uncertainty, unlike the many forms of football, because there is no clock to regulate the length of play, and so only the collecting of outs will put down the foe. In most games a winning side will record twenty seven outs. On 2nd July and 4th September—sixty four days apart—Coventry City needed to record seventy two outs to get their victory, but not even that was done in what might have been deemed a typical fashion.

After seven innings, the score stood at a five-all draw, and it was the same after nine innings as well. Also, after ten, then after eleven, then twelve, and so on until the game was suspended after the twentieth innings because of the setting of the sun. Because this game was the third and last of this particular series and each team was to start a new series against a fresh opponent the following day, the match could not be resumed until the next time the clubs played, which was yesterday the 4th in Bury, with a supporting crowd that by most accounts had more than trebled from the match’s beginnings two months ago and one hundred twenty miles away.

As the visiting team for the game, Bury led off the 21st innings to cheers unusual for a “visiting” club. No scoring occurred in any of the next three innings until Bury scored two in the top of the twenty fourth, the first runs scored since the seventh inning played in July, but weirdly enough Coventry awoke from their own sixteen innings slumber to plate three of their own and win when Mitchell scored on a fly ball out to centre field hit by Harris. The opprobrium directed towards both clubs emanated immediately from the seats, which was stanched only once both clubs returned having switched uniforms and started the game already scheduled for that day.