A’s 19-Inning Marathon An Excuse To Post Wilson Valdez Pitching Video

Last night (or early this morning if you live on the east coast which I’m assuming pretty much everyone reading this post does), the Oakland A’s and Los Angeles Angels played one of those beautifully long marathons that can sometimes become the stuff of legend.

It took 19 innings for the A’s to gain a 10-8 win over their intra-division rivals, thanks to a Brandon Moss (former Phillie alert!!!) two-run homer that ended a contest that took more than six hours to complete, making it the longest game in Oakland history.

And while it’s always super cool to wake up in the morning and find that there is still a Major League Baseball game from the previous night still being played, it’s even cooler when that baseball game provides you the opportunity to post video of Wilson Valdez pitching.

I mean, that never gets old, right?

Sure, the Phillies have played longer games before. In fact, the Phils have played five games of 20+ innings in their long history…

• 1918: 21 innings 2-1 loss to Chicago
• 1905: 20 innings 2-1 loss to Chicago (same score, same opponent… kinda weird, huh?)
• 1919: 20 innings 9-8 loss to Boston
• 1973: 20 innings 5-4 win over Atlanta
• 1993: 20 innings 7-6 win over Los Angeles (Kevin Stocker‘s Major League debut)

Of course, not many people remember the three contests that happened prior to 1920, and if you do, you likely don’t know how to use a computer and probably think a “blogosphere” is some new kind of zeppelin.

By now, everyone remembers what happened in the Phils’ 19-inning, 5-4 classic over the Cincinnati Reds in May of 2011, when Valdez, who was playing second base at the time, was called on to pitch the 19th inning after real life relief pitcher Danys Baez pitched the best game of his Phillies tenure with five innings of one-hit ball.

Ryan Howard also crushed a game-tying homer in the bottom of the 10th to prolong the madness for another nine innings.

Finally, Raul Ibanez won the game with a walk-off sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 19th, making Valdez  the first position player to earn a win since Colorado catcher Brent Mayne on Aug. 22, 2000.

(BY THE WAY… DEAR MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL… IF YOU’RE GOING TO ALLOW PEOPLE TO EMBED VIDEO ON YOUR PAGE, AND EVEN PUT AN “EMBED” BUTTON BENEATH THE VIDEO IN QUESTION, PLEASE MAKE IT SO THAT THE VIDEO IS ACTUALLY AVAILABLE TO VIEW WHEN IT’S EMBEDDED ON A PERSON’S BLOG. THANKS, MORONS.)

Baez, Ibanez and Howard probably had more to do with the victory than Valdez, but watching a utility infielder actually pick up the win, all while shaking off the catcher during the course of the inning, turned this game into the stuff of legend.

It also spurned an absurd love for Valdez by many that obscured what a mediocre player he was.

But let’s not dwell on that today. Let’s use the A’s marathon win over the Angels to relive one of the great games from the annals of Phillies history.

I mean, what else are you going to do on an off-day at the end of April? Work?