Baseball: A report from the 20-inning playoff marathon

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Harvard-Westlake Coach Matt LaCour had no time to call his wife Tuesday night to explain why he wasn’t home from his team’s Southern Section-Toyota Division III wild-card playoff game at Downey that started at 3:15 p.m.

‘My wife found out we were still playing at 10 p.m. by watching the Channel 11 news,’ he said.

The longest baseball playoff game in Southern Section history ended at 10:35 p.m. in the 20th inning when Downey scored a run to win, 3-2.

‘We were lucky they had lights, or unlucky,’ LaCour said.

Harvard-Westlake players were exhausted by the time the team returned to North Hollywood and it was approaching midnight.

‘We played three games last night,’ LaCour said Wednesday morning. ‘There was physical exhaustion, but the guys left everything they had on the field. It was one of those games, the farther away the game gets, the more you’re going to appreciate it. Anybody who was at the game or a part of it is never going to forget it.’

Probably the biggest winner was El Rancho, which gets to face a pitching-depleted Downey team on Friday in the first round of the Division III playoffs.

-- Eric Sondheimer

-- Note from Thom Simmons from the Southern Section office: ‘Actually, that only ties as the second longest. in 1926 Pomona College and Fullerton HS played 23 innings, with Pomona winning, 6-5. In 1962 Orange HS and Santa Ana HS also played a 20 inning game with Orange ending up with the win, 7-6.’

-- Editor Bob: HOWEVER, Thom couldn’t tell us for sure if either of the games he mentions was a playoff game, and was Pomona College the name of a high school in 1926? Subsequent blogs have mentioned both games brought up by Thom.