April 10, 1981: Pawtucket, Rochester warm up for longest game with extra innings on Opening Day

In other seasons, the Opening Day faceoff between the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox and Rochester Red Wings on April 10, 1981, might have been one of the most dramatic and memorable games of the year for fans of both teams. On an unseasonably gorgeous afternoon in western New York, Pawtucket jumped out to leads of 4-0 and 5-2 before the Red Wings knotted the game, 5-5, in the ninth inning. The teams battled into the 13th inning, when a hit and a throwing error gave the Red Wings a 6-5 win.

But Opening Day was permanently overshadowed just eight days later, when the International League’s PawSox and Red Wings battled for 32 innings at Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium before umpires suspended the game at 4 A.M. That game was resumed in June; Pawtucket won, 3-2, in the 33rd inning. As of 2025 it remained the longest game in professional baseball history.1

The April 10 game, while only a footnote to the Longest Game, is worth revisiting. Fans who enjoy glimpses of coming greatness will spot two future Hall of Famers and two future All-Stars in the lineups. And those who wait for baseball’s return each spring will enjoy the story of an exciting game before a packed house on a sunny Opening Day.

Some 9,476 fans came to Rochester’s Silver Stadium in 69-degree weather2 to see how manager Doc Edwards’ Red Wings would follow up on their 1980 performance. The Baltimore Orioles’ top farm team had finished in third place with a 74-65 record, 8½ games behind the first-place Columbus Clippers. The Wings were eliminated in the first round of the four-team Governors’ Cup playoffs.3

Returnees for 1981 included the team’s three top winners on the mound – Larry Jones,4 Steve Luebber, and Mike Boddicker. Boddicker, a 23-year-old right-hander, got the Opening Day start. He’d been chosen by Baltimore from the University of Iowa in the sixth round of the June 1978 draft and quickly worked his way up. He went 12-9 with a 2.18 ERA in 1980, earning a cup of coffee with Baltimore at season’s end.

Among position players, the Red Wings’ roster included prospects such as shortstop Bobby Bonner and outfielder Drungo Hazewood. But the most eagerly anticipated arrival bore a familiar name. Twenty-year-old third baseman5 Cal Ripken Jr. had spent time at Silver Stadium as a boy in 1969 and 1970, when his father, Cal Sr., managed the Red Wings.6 By 1981, Cal Sr. was a coach on Earl Weaver’s staff in Baltimore. Cal Jr., a second-round pick in the June 1978 draft, spent 1980 with Double-A Charlotte, where he hit .276 with 25 home runs and 78 RBIs.

Pawtucket, a Boston Red Sox affiliate, had finished out of the running in 1980 with a 62-77 record and one tie, 20½ games behind Columbus. The PawSox’ only pitcher to reach double figures in wins was righty Danny Parks, a 10th-round draft pick in June 1976 out of the University of Memphis, who went 10-10 with a 2.59 ERA in 28 games. Manager “Walpole Joe” Morgan7 gave Parks the Opening Day start in 1981.8

Pawtucket’s lineup included prospects such as left fielder Chico Walker, who’d hit .272 with 21 stolen bases the previous season; second baseman Marty Barrett, making the jump from Double-A Bristol; and catcher Rich Gedman, who’d hit .236 at Pawtucket in 1980 with 11 home runs. Walker and Gedman had received late-season call-ups to Boston.

Also noteworthy were third baseman Wade Boggs and first baseman Dave Koza. Boggs, 22 years old, had hit .306 at Pawtucket in 1980 but was considered a borderline prospect at best because of his lack of speed or power.9 Boggs also appeared stuck behind established big-league third sacker Carney Lansford, acquired by Boston from the California Angels in December 1980, who led the American League in batting in 1981 with a .336 average. Koza, second on the 1980 PawSox with 13 home runs, never reached the majors but attained trivia fame by driving in the winning run in the Longest Game.

The PawSox seized the season’s first lead. With two out in the first inning, Walker tripled and scored on a balk by Boddicker. Walker also played a role in Pawtucket’s next run, scored in the third inning. Barrett drew a base on balls and Walker doubled him to third base. Designated hitter Russ Laribee’s10 groundout scored Barrett for a 2-0 advantage.11

As Parks held the home team off the board, the PawSox added on. In the fourth inning, Gedman doubled, took third on a groundout, and scored on a wild pitch. Boddicker was taken out after five innings, having surrendered six hits, five walks, and three earned runs. Reliever Jim Umbarger dug Rochester’s hole still deeper in the sixth. He hit shortstop Julio Valdéz with a pitch; Valdéz stole second base and scored on a single by center fielder Lee Graham for a 4-0 Pawtucket lead.12

At that point, momentum began to turn. Pawtucket baserunners Sam Bowen and Graham were retired on the basepaths that inning as the PawSox ran themselves out of a chance at additional runs.13

In the bottom half, Parks, who had given up just three hits, seemed to be fading as he handed a one-out walk to second baseman Tom Eaton. Morgan stuck with righty Parks against lefty-swinging center fielder Dallas Williams, who had homered on Opening Day 1980 and hit 11 round-trippers that season. Williams drilled a pitch to the opposite field, clearing the left-field fence for a two-run homer that made the score 4-2. “I shouldn’t have let him pitch to Williams,” Morgan said later. “That was the play that gave Rochester their chance.”14

Pawtucket responded in the top of the seventh as Barrett drove Umbarger’s first pitch for a solo home run. Ripken answered in the bottom half, hitting what one writer called “a vicious line-drive homer to left” off Mike Smithson to bring the score to 5-3.15 The Wings pulled still closer in the eighth. Bonner drew a leadoff walk and, one out later, took third on Williams’s single off righty reliever Luis Aponte. Aponte committed the game’s second run-scoring balk, bringing Rochester within a run.16

After Rochester reliever Jeff Schneider worked a scoreless ninth, the Red Wings mounted a last-chance rally. First baseman Dan Logan led off with a walk and catcher Ed Putman bunted pinch-runner Floyd Rayford to second. Red Wings manager Edwards had noticed that Pawtucket had no left-handers in its bullpen, and he sent lefty-swinging Tom Chism to hit for the right-handed Ripken.17 Chism lined a single over the leaping Valdéz and into left field, scoring Rayford to tie the game, 5-5.18

Schneider had pitched only 4⅓ innings in spring training. He topped that total in one game, working the last five innings for Rochester and scattering two hits. He survived a threat in the 12th inning: After wild-pitching Barrett to third with two out, he struck out Russ Quetti, who had replaced Laribee as DH.19 More two-out tension followed in the 13th. With runners on first and second, Valdéz lined a ball up the middle, where Eaton knocked it down and fed Bonner for the inning-ending force at second.20

Having perhaps saved the game, Eaton helped win it in the bottom half. He slapped a one-out single off Pawtucket’s fourth pitcher, Win Remmerswaal. Next up was switch-hitting Mike Hart,21 who replaced Williams after Williams was ejected for arguing in the 10th inning. Hart singled into right field, where Bowen fielded the ball on two hops and threw to third to try to catch a sliding Eaton. Bowen’s throw sailed wide to the home-plate side of third base and rolled to the stands, the game’s only error. Eaton got back on his feet and scored, ending the game in 3 hours and 28 minutes.22

Afterward, Eaton – playing his first Triple-A game – admitted he had gone to third on his own volition, without looking at Edwards coaching there. “It was a mistake on my part, but it worked out,” Eaton said. In the Pawtucket clubhouse, Morgan grumbled over his team’s lapses: “We gave [the game] to them, let’s face it.”23 Schneider earned the win, while Remmerswaal took the loss.

Neither team improved on its 1980 performance. The Red Wings finished fourth at 69-70, 19 games behind Columbus, and were again eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. The Red Sox finished sixth at 67-73, 21½ games back.

Ripken Jr. and Boggs went on to Hall of Fame careers, while Boddicker and Gedman became All-Stars. Boddicker and Barrett also won American League Championship Series MVP awards in 1983 and 1986 respectively. Schneider and Bonner achieved a different kind of fame. In 1982, they shared an “Orioles Future Stars” baseball card with Ripken, which became sought-after among collectors as the first Topps card to feature Cal Jr.24

Others fared less well. Hazewood, who’d jumped from Double A to Baltimore in 1980, struck out four times and lined into a double play in his first Triple-A game.25 He hit .094 in 18 games in Rochester, spending most of the season back in Double A, and his career never recovered. And Eaton, who collected three hits, hit just .216 in 115 games in Rochester; 1981 was his final professional season.

Acknowledgments and author’s note

This story was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

The author, who grew up in the Rochester area, would have liked to see this game. Unfortunately, April 10, 1981, was a Friday, and he was almost certainly detained at game time (2 P.M.) by his obligations at suburban Scribner Road Elementary School.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources credited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet for team, season, and other information.

Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet do not offer box scores for minor-league games, but the April 11, 1981, editions of the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle and the Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Evening Times printed box scores.

Image of TCMA 1981 Rochester Red Wings card #1 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Brian Murphy, “The Longest Baseball Game Took 33 Innings to Win,” MLB.com, June 23, 2023, https://www.mlb.com/news/the-longest-professional-baseball-game-ever-played. Many of the participants in Opening Day 1981 also took part in the Longest Game.

2 Rudy Martzke, “No Better Way to Spend Opening Day,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, April 11, 1981: 1C. For comparison’s sake, the Red Wings played their 1982 home opener on April 13 in 43-degree temperatures, with winds up to 25 miles per hour. They lost, 23-1, to the Tidewater Tides, then a New York Mets farm team. Michael Lewis, “Red Wings’ Shellacking Has Fans Cheering for Rain,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 14, 1982: 4D.

3 “Governors’ Cup,” Baseball-Reference BR Bullpen, accessed May 2024, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Governors%27_Cup. The Clippers were a New York Yankees farm team at the time.

4 Jones and Luebber won 13 games apiece for the 1980 Red Wings, while Boddicker won 12. Unlike the other two, Jones never reached the majors. A right-hander out of Florida State University, he pitched seven seasons in the minor leagues, leaving pro baseball after the 1983 season.

5 In 1980 Ripken played in 120 games at third base for Charlotte and only 25 at shortstop. In 1981 Ripken played in 85 games at third base and 35 at shortstop for the Red Wings. Bonner was the team’s starting shortstop, making 79 appearances there. Ripken did not move full-time to shortstop until the 1983 season, by which time he was playing for the Orioles.

6 Cal Jr.’s memories of his time in Rochester included the Red Wings’ game of August 3, 1969, when Rochester infielder Chico Fernandez suffered a near-fatal beaning from a pitch thrown by Tidewater’s Larry Bearnarth. Kurt Blumenau, “August 3, 1969: Fan Favorite Chico Fernandez Survives Near-Fatal Beaning in Minors,” SABR Games Project, accessed May 2024, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-3-1969-fan-favorite-chico-fernandez-survives-near-fatal-beaning-in-minors/.

7 Morgan, a former major-league infielder, managed the Boston Red Sox from 1988 to 1991. A native of Walpole, Massachusetts, he is sometimes referred to as “Walpole Joe” to differentiate him from the Hall of Fame second baseman of the same name. Walpole Joe also served as the 1972 Pittsburgh Pirates’ hitting coach and as a coach with the Red Sox from April 1985 to July 1988, when he took the managerial reins.

8 Parks also started the Longest Game, opposing Rochester’s Larry Jones. Suffice to say that neither starter got the decision.

9 Steve West, “Wade Boggs,” SABR Biography Project, accessed May 2024, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Wade-Boggs/.

10 Laribee, an outfielder who batted left and threw right, was in his fifth and final minor-league season. He hit .212 in 92 games with Pawtucket in 1981.

11 “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox,” Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Evening Times, April 11, 1981: 15.

12 “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox.”

13 John Kolomic, “Red Wings Rally Before 9,476,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 11, 1981: 1C. The article does not specify how Bowen and Graham were retired but says that Pawtucket stumbled its way into four outs on the bases over the course of the game. Umbarger and catcher Ed Putman each picked runners off first; another runner was retired after leaving first base too early on a fly out; and a fourth was out at home plate in a botched squeeze play.

14 “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox”; Kolomic.

15 “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox”; Kolomic.

16 “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox.” The Rochester paper’s game story has Williams singling in Bonner for the run. However, both newspapers’ box scores credit Williams with only two RBIs, which are accounted for by his two-run home run in the sixth inning.

17 Greg Boeck, “Memories of Silver’s Opener,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 11, 1981: 1C.

18 Kolomic, “Red Wings Rally Before 9,476;” “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox.”

19 “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox.” Barrett had singled and moved to second on a groundout.

20 Kolomic, “Red Wings Rally Before 9,476”; “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox.”

21 Two different outfielders named Mike Hart played for the Rochester Red Wings in the 1980s. This one was James Michael Hart, then 29 years old, whose sole major-league experience was five games with the Texas Rangers in 1980; he played in Rochester in 1981 and 1982. The other, Michael Lawrence Hart, played in Rochester in 1986 and 1987; he also played for the Minnesota Twins in 1984 and the Orioles in 1987.

22 Kolomic; “The Move That Wasn’t Made Irks the Pawsox.” According to the Pawtucket Evening Times, Remmerswaal was backing up third base but was unable to make a play to get Eaton at home.

23 Kolomic.

24 The card is #21 in the 1982 Topps set. As of March 2025, the Trading Card Database listed a median price of $13.99 for the card. “#21 – Orioles Future Stars (Bob Bonner / Cal Ripken / Jeff Schneider),” Trading Card Database, accessed March 2025, https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/89/cid/24169/1982-Topps-21-Orioles-Future-Stars-(Bob-Bonner-/-Cal-Ripken-/-Jeff-Schneider).

25 Boeck, “Memories of Silver’s Opener.”