For 399 minutes on Monday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays staged an epic for the ages. Game 3 of the 2025 World Series featured 609 pitches thrown over 18 innings. Its gravitational pull involved nearly every player who was eligible to take the field. It stretched and strained the limits of possibility.
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By the time the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman homered in the middle of the night to send the Blue Jays to a bitter 6-5 defeat, the game had long passed into territory reserved for instant classics. It is perhaps one of the best baseball games ever played.
The pressure brought forth both boneheadedness and brilliance. Pivotal plays were decided by mere inches. The outcome lifted spirits, crushed souls, and drained everyone associated with the spectacle. And the teams only had a few hours to rest before doing it all again in Game 4 Tuesday night.
Monday night’s six-hour, 39-minute test of endurance raised a question: What are some of the most dramatic marathon sessions across all sports through the years?
World history and NBA history on a Thursday in ‘89
Date: Nov. 9, 1989
Sport: NBA
Length: Five overtimes; three-plus hours
Outcome: Milwaukee Bucks 155, Seattle SuperSonics 154
Nov. 9, 1989 should have been a ho-hum, four-game NBA Thursday night, especially when most of the world’s attention that day was focused on watching the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The host Milwaukee Bucks and Seattle SuperSonics tipped off long before a game in Oakland, Calif., between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors. Still, the Warriors and Lakers finished first.
The Bucks prevailed 155-154 in five overtimes, still the longest game in the shot-clock era. The game was so long that the Basketball-Reference.com snapshot can’t hold all of the line score.
Three players played at least 60 minutes and a fourth, Bucks guard Alvin Robertson, played 59. Sonics sharpshooter Dale Ellis set an NBA record by playing a leg-burning 69 of the 73 total minutes and scored a career-high 53 points. Sonics forward Xavier McDaniel played 68 minutes, the second-most in history. Bucks guard Jay Humphries played 62 minutes.
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We may not be mentioning this game if the Bucks had held on to a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter, or if Humphries had canned two free
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