Speedball

Well before the introduction of a pitch clock in the major leagues – like more than 100 years before the pitch clock reaches the majors in 2023 – there is a minor league game that takes just 32 minutes to play.

That is not a typo.

The ultra-caffeinated game is played 115 years ago today between the Mobile Sea Gulls and the Atlanta Crackers in Ponce de Leon Park in Georgia.

Mobile wins 2-1 in a game in which both teams hustle on and off the field with pitchers taking no warmup tosses and batters often swinging at the first pitch.

Even with that, baserunners manage to steal four bases.

The time of 32 minutes for this game in 1910 easily eclipses the previous record of 44 minutes from another minor league game in 1904.

According to an account in the Atlanta Journal, both starting pitchers from the 1910 game – Mobile’s Bill Chappelle and Atlanta’s Hank Griffin – looked “like demented steam engines.”

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