On Saturday, May 1, 1920, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves played to a 1–1 tie in 26 innings, the most innings ever played in a single game in the history of Major League Baseball (MLB). The game was played at Braves Field in Boston before a crowd estimated at 4,000. Both Leon Cadore of Brooklyn and Joe Oeschger of Boston pitched complete games, and with 26 innings pitched, jointly hold the record for the longest pitching appearance in MLB history. Their record is considered unbreakable, as modern pitchers rarely pitch even nine innings, and newer baseball rules have made long extra-innings games a rarity.
The day of the game saw rainy weather, and it was uncertain if the game would be played, but the skies cleared enough to allow it to proceed. Brooklyn scored a run in the fifth inning, and Boston in the sixth; thereafter, the pitchers became increasingly dominant. As the game exceeded eighteen innings, the small crowd at Braves Field cheered both pitchers. The last twenty innings were scoreless, and when darkness started to fall, the umpires called a halt after the twenty-sixth inning, as baseball fields did not yet have artificial lighting.
There have been claims that the lengthy pitching appearance ruined the arms of Oeschger and Cadore, but both pitched several more years in the major leagues, and Oeschger won twenty games in 1921. The performance meant that they remained better known than other former major leaguers of that era. Although 25-inning games were played in the major leagues in 1974 and 1984, each team involved used several pitchers, and the records for endurance posted by Oeschger and Cadore were not threatened. No major league pitcher has pitched twenty innings in a game since 1929.