DENVER – If you Google “MLB Sunrise” you’ll get 655,000 results. These are not the results one sought after in fact, the first page is mostly filled with results of listicles which include the Kansas City Royals’ “Sunrise Dog” as one of the oddest ballpark foods. The second page of Google quickly breaks down into results which show that Jaff Decker went to Sunrise High School and stock videos of sunrises over different MLB parks.
The result I crave when I enter this search is not there because, there has never been a professional, let alone Major League game that has been played until sunrise. This—a game played until sunrise—is my dream.
For my dream to come true, the stars would have to align, literally.
I write this today because Tuesday night not only saw a mercilessly long Cardinals-Dodgers game but a nine-inning game where the Braves topped the Pirates in walk-off fashion at 1:53 a.m. ET.
First, we have to make sure that this hasn’t happened in pro history before. Thankfully for us wishing this madness on some poor souls, there weren’t lights in every big league park until 1988 so playing through the night was impossible. Now they have been using lights since 1935 but it wasn’t until much later on that night games became more common than day games.
The “Sunrise Game” has not happened before, the closest I came to finding a game that almost did it was a July 4, 1985, contest between the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves played at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The game itself started at 9:04 p.m. ET after a two-hour rain delay and according to Marv Albert it ended at 3:55 a.m. ET. The game included one of the 308 cycles in MLB history accomplished by Keith Hernandez, Roger McDowell ate seven cheeseburgers during the game and a bunch of other insane things happened during the 8 hour and 15 minute-long contest. Oh yeah, and they still shot off the fireworks at 4:15 a.m to celebrate Independence Day.
While researching this game that my good friend Ted Chalfen turned me on to we came across a sign that reads, “what the hell is going on.” Well, I can say, it gets weirder because of course it does because it’s baseball.
When I say,” Mitch Williams walk-off, 1993,” your mind probably goes to a place which includes Joe Carter. It shouldn’t, it should go to this much stranger, weirder baseball place. A place where Baseball Reference is even confused about the start time of a game because it started at a ridiculous 1:28 a.m. ET.
The game went to extra innings because of course it did and Williams got an RBI knock at 4:40 a.m. ET to wrap up the contest. But how is it possible that a game would even start an hour and a half after midnight. It was the nightcap of a doubleheader where the first game took 8:28, including 5:54 in rain delays and 2:34 in actual playing time. The second game took 3:12 without any precipitation.
Among the amazing quotes from the affair:
“I do some of my best work at 4:30 in the morning,” said Williams.
“I arrived at the park in sunlight and I left in sunlight,” Phillie outfielder Pete Incaviglia said. “That’s never happened to me before for a night game.
Added first baseman John Kruk, now an ESPN analyst: “We knew we had the advantage. One, two, three in the morning, we were in our prime. The Padres team back then, they had a lot of guys who went to church a lot. They were done.”
“My memories are of people coming back from the bars. I think they came from the bars. They came from somewhere. Fairly inebriated,” Ruben Amaro Jr. said. “But being right over the dugouts and screaming and really getting into it. It was kind of bizarre. Kind of surreal. But it was neat running out there and high-fiving everybody after the game. It was hilarious, but that’s the kind of stuff that makes baseball so amazing.”
The real question here is how close where they with an ending time of 4:40 a.m.? According to timeanddate.com, the sun rose at 5:36 a.m on July 3, 1993, in Philadelphia, but as many early risers know the sun starts to shine its light before it’s above the horizon. Astronomical Twilight started at 3:35 a.m. that day so the teams played well into that but this isn’t much of concern for us because Astronomical Twilight would be rather unnoticeable with the light pollution of a stadium. Now Nautical Twilight began at 4:22 a.m. that faithful day. Nautical Twilight is defined as when the geometric center of the sun reaches 12° below the horizon.
“Under good atmospheric conditions with the absence of other illumination, during nautical twilight, the human eye may distinguish general outlines of ground objects but cannot participate in detailed outdoor operations,” Wikipedia tells me.
The last Twilight is Civil Twilight and that began just 24 minutes after the game ended at 5:04 am. This is the Twilight that you think of when you think of Twilight. The kind of Twilight that would be enough to definitively state that they played this game until it got light out. They fell shy, it’s never happened.
How could it happen?
This is the most likely scenario.
First: The game would need to be played within about two weeks of the summer solstice and the nearer to the date of the solstice the better because the sun comes out earliest on the solstice.
Second: It would probably have to happen in Boston. For instance, if that Phillies-Padres game happened at Fenway they would’ve already been 10 minutes into Civil Twilight and just 35 minutes short of sunrise if the game was played within a week of the solstice. Other locations where it could happen are Minnesota and Seattle, essentiality it needs to happen very far north where the sun comes up just after 5 a.m. during the solstice rather than Miami where it rises around 6:30 a.m.
Third: Weather needs to occur. This knocks out Seattle which has a retractable dome but thanks to Target Field Minnesota is alive. There needs to be lengthy two to three-hour rain delay.
Fourth: The game would need to go extras and a lot of extras. The duration of the game needs to be roughly twice that of a normal three-ish hour big league game.
Fifth (optional): It would help if the start time was 8 p.m. ET rather than a normal 7 p.m. start. These normally happen for Nationally Televised games—which good news—makes the game longer due to the commercial breaks and a variety of other things. At 8 p.m. plus three hours of rain we have an 11:00 p.m start, add a six-hour game and it’s 5 a.m. We did it.
My unlikely dream scenario would likely feature the Yankees in Boston playing the Red Sox for Fourth of July on ESPN. Rain douses the festivities but the game makes up for it by going 16 innings. And with the pace, the Yankees and Red Sox play, 16 innings plus a summer shower should see us play till sunrise.
Someday in our lifetime, this will happen.
