April 20, 1986: Pirates beat Cubs after 4 months, 17 innings on Barry Bonds pinch-hit single

First-year manager Jim Leyland’s Pittsburgh Pirates sought their sixth consecutive win and a series sweep of the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on April 20, 1986. The Pirates eventually emerged with a victory, but it took 17 innings, 17 pitchers from both sides, and nearly four months. Chicago right fielder Keith Moreland tied the game with a two-out, ninth-inning homer, and it remained deadlocked as darkness suspended play after 13 innings. When action resumed on August 11, Pittsburgh rookie Barry Bonds—a member of the Triple A Hawaii Islanders on April 20—broke the tie with a 17th-inning pinch-hit single, and the Pirates pulled out a 10-8 win.

Less than two weeks into the 1986 schedule, Pittsburgh and Chicago were already on their second weekend series. The Pirates, last in the National League East Division for two straight seasons, had beaten the Cubs twice in three games at Three Rivers Stadium, including Leyland’s first big-league managerial victory on April 12, the launch of a five-game winning streak. The first two games of the rematch in Chicago had yielded Pittsburgh’s most recent victories: one a four-pitcher shutout in the Cubs’ home opener, the other on a four-homer, 14-run barrage.1

Johnny Ray’s first-inning RBI single off Cubs starter Dennis Eckersley brought in the first run of Sunday afternoon’s series finale, but Chicago manager Jim Frey’s revamped lineup countered with a two-out rally against Mike Bielecki in the second.2 After Jody Davis’ single, regular leadoff hitter Bob Dernier—dropped to eighth with a .154 batting average—singled. Eckersley then singled in Davis, tying the score, 1-1.3

The batting order flipped around to Davey Lopes, 13 days from his 41st birthday and subbing for longtime Los Angeles Dodgers teammate Ron Cey at third.4 Lopes, who had singled in the first inning, made it a 2-for-2 day with another single, driving in Dernier with the go-ahead run. Second-place hitter Shawon Dunston—up from eighth in Frey’s shuffle—scored Eckersley with Chicago’s fifth straight single. The Cubs led, 3-1.

Eckersley took the two-run lead into the fourth. Joe Orsulak, who had doubled and scored Pittsburgh’s run in the first,5 singled, moved up on a balk, and came home on another Ray single. Sid Bream pulled a home run into the right-field bleachers, his second in two days, giving the Pirates a 4-3 lead.6

Steve Kemp then sliced a two-strike liner to left.7 Cubs offseason acquisition Jerry Mumphrey attempted a diving catch but slipped on grass wet from a light rain and slammed into the brick wall in foul territory while the ball landed inside the foul line.8 Kemp circled the bases with an inside-the-park homer, and Mumphrey left the game with hand and knee injuries.9

But Bielecki soon lost the lead. With one out in the Cubs’ fourth, Eckersley singled. Lopes drove him home with a triple, and Dunston’s run-scoring double knotted the score, 5-5.

Leyland plugged in Bob Walk, and the Pirates again seized the upper hand. Walk retired Ryne Sandberg and Moreland on groundballs to preserve the tie, and Bream’s fifth-inning sacrifice fly put Pittsburgh back in front. While Walk limited the Cubs to no hits and two walks over the fifth through eighth innings, facing just one more than the minimum because catcher Tony Peña gunned down Lopes stealing after a sixth-inning walk, Peña’s two-run single off reliever Jay Baller in the seventh gave the Pirates an 8-5 lead.

Walk had contributed 4⅔ hitless innings—the longest relief outing of his 14-season career as a swingman—when he took the mound in the ninth. But pinch-hitter Thad Bosley’s leadoff triple and Lopes’ fourth hit of the game, a double, cut Chicago’s deficit to 8-6.

Leyland summoned right-hander Jim Winn, unscored upon in four relief appearances in 1986. Eight pitches later, the hard-throwing Winn had fanned both Dunston and Sandberg,10 leaving righty-swinging Moreland as Chicago’s last stand against a sweep.

Moreland, fourth in the NL with 106 RBIs in 1985, had failed to reach the outfield in four hitless at-bats. Winn missed the strike zone with the first pitch, then thought Moreland offered at the next pitch. On appeal, however, first base umpire Randy Marsh upheld home plate arbiter Bruce Froemming’s ruling of ball two.11

Left-handed-hitting Leon Durham, already with two homers against Pirates’ right-handed pitching in 1986, was on deck.12

“I was looking for a fastball then,” Moreland said afterward. “If I had been catching, I would have called a fastball.”13

Moreland connected with Winn’s fastball and drove it over the 400-foot sign and into the seats in center. The game was tied, 8-8.14

The action dragged into extra innings as Wrigley Field—still the majors’ only ballpark without lights—got darker and darker, a week before Daylight Saving Time would have provided another hour of sunlight.15 Lee Smith, the fifth Cubs pitcher after Eckersley, Baller, Matt Keough, and George Frazier, retired four straight Pirates, then left with a strained groin in the 11th, a reported casualty of a wet mound.16 Frey turned to Dick Ruthven for the final two outs of the inning17 before bringing in Rick Sutcliffe—two days removed from a seven-inning start in the series opener—for his first relief appearance since 1983.

Against Sutcliffe in the 13th, pinch-hitter Mike Diaz’s one-out single with runners on first and second nearly broke the tie,18 but shortstop Dunston smothered the ball before it got into the outfield. Instead of a go-ahead RBI single, the bases were loaded, and Sutcliffe set down Bill Almon and R.J. Reynolds to keep it tied.19

The Cubs had their own bases-loaded opportunity in the 11th, on Lopes’ fifth hit and walks to Moreland and Durham, but Cecilio Guante caught pinch-hitter Manny Trillo looking at strike three for the third out. Like Frey, Leyland lost a reliever to injury when Don Robinson strained his right knee while walking Lopes on a full count in the 13th.20

After Pat Clements, Pittsburgh’s sixth pitcher, picked off Dunston to conclude the 13th, Froemming stopped play at 6:13 p.m.—4 hours and 48 minutes after the first pitch and 23 minutes before sunset.21

“It was really dark in the last couple of innings,” Moreland said. “That’s why we need lights at Wrigley.”22

Pittsburgh’s streak ended a night later, when its bullpen failed to hold two late-inning leads against the Mets. The suspended game resumed on August 11, the Pirates’ next visit to Chicago, and both clubs had made significant changes by then. The fifth-place Cubs had fired Frey in June and turned the reins over to Gene Michael.23 Lopes—with a 5-for-5, two-walk game in progress—was traded to the Houston Astros for reliever Frank DiPino on July 21.24

Out on April 20 with a broken nose, Chris Speier replaced Lopes at third.25 Steve Trout, demoted to the bullpen in August after 3½ seasons in Chicago’s rotation,26 became the Cubs’ eighth pitcher of the game. He retired Pittsburgh in order in the 14th and 15th innings.

The sixth-place Pirates were augmented with two promising young players. They had called up the 22-year-old Bonds from Triple A in May, less than a year after selecting him in the June 1985 amateur draft.27 Bonds—who had played the Tucson Toros in a Pacific Coast League doubleheader in Honolulu on April 2028—was on the bench when the Pirates-Cubs game restarted, but a July trade acquisition, 23-year-old Bobby Bonilla, joined the fray at first base.29

Pittsburgh’s new pitcher was 23-year-old righty Barry Jones, appearing in his ninth big-league game after a July promotion from Triple A.30 For three straight innings, the Cubs mounted progressively thornier threats—Speier’s two-out walk in the 14th, Dernier’s leadoff double off the wall in the 15th, and a bases-loaded, one-out conflagration in the 16th—but Jones held them back each time.31 Third baseman Jim Morrison’s backhand stop of Dernier’s grounder denied the potential game-ending hit in the 16th.32

DiPino followed Trout with a scoreless 16th. In the top of the 17th, Ray led off with his fourth hit, a double sliced just beyond Dernier’s reach in center.33 Jones attempted to sacrifice, but Ray held at second at Speier took the out at first.

The Cubs walked Bonilla, then brought in right-hander Dave Gumpert to face Peña, who popped up. With the righty-swinging Morrison due up, Leyland switched to the lefty-hitting Bonds, batting .219 with 10 home runs in his first 59 big-league games.

“I know Gumpert can be tough against right-handers, and Barry has been swinging the bat real good,” Leyland explained afterward. “I just had a certain feeling Barry had a better chance in that situation.”34

Bonds lined a single to center. Ray scored, and Dernier, pressing to cut down the runner at home, overran the ball. Bonilla crossed the plate for a two-run Pittsburgh lead.35

Jones pitched a one-two-three 17th, and the Pirates finally had their win.36 The Cubs’ 10 pitchers set a National and American League record, and the teams’ combined total of 17 pitchers broke the NL mark.37

Behind home runs by Bonds, Diaz, and Morrison, Pittsburgh beat rookie Jamie Moyer, 10-7, in August 11’s regularly scheduled game,38 but the Pirates never made it out of the cellar again, finishing 44 games behind the World Series-champion Mets. Chicago came in fifth at 70-90.

Darkness curtailed games at Wrigley Field as late as August 1987.39 A season later, in August 1988, the Cubs installed lights, freeing play from sunset’s constraint.

Author’s Note

The author followed this game pitch-by-pitch on television and radio in April and August 1986. He was 11 years old when the game began but had turned 12 by its end.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Barry Bonds, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN198604200.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1986/B04200CHN1986.htm

Notes

1 Bob Hertzel, “Pirates Hang Together: Bullpen Answers the Call,” Pittsburgh Press: April 19, 1986: B1; Bob Hertzel, “Spring Madness: 14-8 Win Is Pirates’ 5th in Row,” Pittsburgh Press, April 20, 1986: D1.

2 Fred Mitchell, “Moreland Revives Cubs,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1986: 3,1.

3 Eckersley recorded 10 of his lifetime 12 major-league RBIs in 1986, which was one of only three seasons in his 24-year career with a substantial number of plate appearances.

4 Lopes and Cey were Dodgers’ teammates from 1972 through 1981. Along with first baseman Steve Garvey and shortstop Bill Russell, second baseman Lopes and third baseman Cey formed Los Angeles’ starting infield from June 1973 through the end of the 1981 season, the longest span for a starting infield in National or American League history. The Cubs had acquired Cey in a January 1983 trade with the Dodgers and Lopes in an August 1984 trade with the Oakland A’s.

5 A day earlier, Orsulak had hit his first big-league home run off Chicago’s Scott Sanderson, in the 167th game of his career.

6 Associated Press, “Darkness Wins Out Over Cubs, Pirates,” Bloomington-Normal (Illinois) Pantagraph, April 21, 1986: B1.

7 Associated Press, “Darkness Wins Out Over Cubs, Pirates.” Kemp was starting for the first time since striking out three times against Dwight Gooden in an Opening Day loss to the New York Mets on April 8.

8 The 33-year-old Mumphrey, a 13-year veteran, had come to the Cubs in a December 1985 trade with the Houston Astros. Associated Press, “Darkness Wins Out Over Cubs, Pirates”; “Fred Mitchell, “Injuries Mount for Cubs, Pirates in Marathon,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1986: 3,3; Associated Press, “Darkness Wins Out Over Cubs, Pirates.”

9 Associated Press, “Darkness Wins Out Over Cubs, Pirates”; Mitchell, “Moreland Revives Cubs”; Mitchell, “Injuries Mount for Cubs, Pirates in Marathon.” Mumphrey returned to the Cubs’ lineup four days later on April 24. It was the 130th and final home run of Kemp’s 11-season major-league career. The Pirates released him on May 8, and he retired after appearing in 16 games for the Texas Rangers in 1988.

10 Gene Collier, “Moreland Becomes a Tough Batter in a Tough Situation,” Pittsburgh Press, April 21, 1986: C1.

11 Charley Feeney, “Darkness Falls on Pirates; Score with Cubs Left Unsettled,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 21, 1986: 13.

12 Durham had homered off Rick Rhoden on April 12 and Rick Reuschel on April 19.

13 Moreland had reached the major leagues as a catcher with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1978 before moving to right field in 1982 after a trade to the Cubs. Collier, “Moreland Becomes a Tough Batter in a Tough Situation.”

14 Collier, “Moreland Becomes a Tough Batter in a Tough Situation.”

15 On July 8, less three months later, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation moving the start of Daylight Saving Time in the United States from the last Sunday of April to the first Sunday of April for 1987. Associated Press, “President Reagan Signs Daylight-Saving Time Bill,” Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader,” July 9, 1986: A3.

16 Nicholas Geranios (Associated Press), “Darkness Halts Bucs, Cubs,” Latrobe (Pennsylvania) Bulletin, April 21, 1986: 13. Smith went on the disabled list with his groin injury and did not pitch again until May 6. Fred Mitchell, “Smith’s Return Brings More Relief,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1986: 4,3.

17 Ruthven made two more appearances for the Cubs before getting released on May 6, ending his 14-season career.

18 Diaz was back in the majors in 1986 for the first time since his big-league debut, a six-game stint with the Cubs in September 1983.

19 Fred Mitchell, “Day Off May Help New-Look Lineup Stay Intact,” Chicago Tribune, April 22, 1986: 4,3.

20 Robinson had undergone arthroscopic surgery on his right knee in October 1985. He went on the disabled list and did not pitch for the Pirates again until June 8. “Robinson Injures His Knee,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 21, 1986: 14; Geranios, “Darkness Halts Bucs, Cubs.”

21 Associated Press, “Darkness Wins Out Over Cubs, Pirates”; “Weather,” Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1986: 3,4; Bob Hertzel, “Pirates’ Spree Hits 5½ with Standoff,” Pittsburgh Press, April 21, 1986: C4.

22 United Press International, “Cubs Shine But Game Halted by Darkness,” Streator (Illinois) Times-Press, April 21, 1986: 11.

23 Fred Mitchell, “Cubs Tap ex-Yankee Skipper: No More Coaches to Go,” Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1986: 2,1.

24 Fred Mitchell, “Lopes Traded to Houston,” Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1986, Chicago Tribune: 3,1. It was the second five-hit game of Lopes’ 16-season career; the other, in the Dodgers’ 18-8 win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field on August 20, 1974, was in a nine-inning game. Lopes was the first Cub to reach base at least seven times in a game since Stan Hack was on base nine times—five hits and four walks—in an 18-inning game against the Cincinnati Reds on August 9, 1942.

25 Mitchell, “Injuries Mount for Cubs, Pirates in Marathon.”

26 Sam Smith, “Pleased Sutcliffe, Pensive Trout Handcuff Phils,” Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1986: 2,1.

27 Bob Hertzel, “Here Comes the Son: Bonds Runs Headlong into the Spotlight,” Pittsburgh Press, May 30, 1986: D1.

28 Harry Blauvelt, “Bonds Sparks Rally as Islanders Salvage Doubleheader Split,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, April 21, 1986: C-1.

29 The Pirates had lost Bonilla to the Chicago White Sox in the December 1985 Rule 5 draft, then reacquired him by trading pitcher José DeLeón to the White Sox on July 23. Bob Hertzel, “Pirates Regain Bonilla for DeLeon,” Pittsburgh Press, July 23, 1986: C6.

30 Bob Hertzel, “Jones Might Be Intimidator Leyland Wants,” Pittsburgh Press, July 29, 1986: C4.

31 Charley Feeney, “Pirates Take Two from Cubs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 12, 1986: 26.

32 Feeney, “Pirates Take Two from Cubs.”

33 Joe Goddard, “Dernier Lightens Cub Gloom: Double Loss Reveals One Bright Spot,” Chicago Sun-Times, August 12, 1986: 92.

34 Associated Press, “Pirates Dump Cubs Twice,” Bloomington-Normal (Illinois) Pantagraph, August 12, 1986: B2.

35 On April 20, Bonilla had gone 0-for-4 as the White Sox first baseman in a 6-2 loss to the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.

36 Jones, who struck out eight in four innings, was credited with his first major-league win.

37 Goddard, “Dernier Lightens Cub Gloom.”

38 It was the eighth start of Moyer’s 26-season, 638-start big-league career.

39 Chicago’s 10 pitchers included two future Hall of Famers (Eckersley and Smith), two pitchers who won Cy Young Awards (Eckersley and Sutcliffe), and five pitchers who started at least 175 big-league games (Eckersley, Keough, Sutcliffe, Ruthven, and Trout). Seven teams had used nine pitchers in a game; the most recent was the Seattle Mariners in a 20-inning win over the Red Sox in 1981. The Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals had combined for 16 pitchers—eight for each team—in a 14-inning game on the last day of the 1982 season. The AL record for total combined pitchers at this time was 18, when both the Cleveland Indians and Washington Senators used nine pitchers in a 20-inning game in September 1971. As of 2026, the record for most pitchers used by a team is 13, done most recently by the Arizona Diamondbacks against the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco Giants against the Colorado Rockies, both on September 24, 2019. The September 2019 Giants-Rockies game is also the record holder for most combined pitchers (25).