A typical game of Tapey Beercone is 6 innings long and lasts about three to three and a half hours. For various reasons some games take longer, sometimes the play is slower, other times breaks are taken between innings. Still other times the inebriated state of one or more of the players causes delays.
As an example, during the second running of the Oregon Tapey Beercone Invitational, “The Reverend”‘s drunken belligerence and subsequent secession from his team caused a major delay to the game’s proceedings. It also earned “The Reverend” a round as Beerpope Reverend I. Other less disruptive delays have included a mid-game break for lunch as was done during the Season 3 game at Traverse Creek Trailhead or lengthy mid-inning conversations which usually involve embarrassing stories at the expense of one or more of the participants.
But even with all this, it is very rare for a game to last much more that four and a half hours. One game, however, took much longer, and blows these other numbers out of the water. The longest game in Tapey Beercone history lasted 360 days, 3 hours or 8,643 hours in total! How could a game possibly last this long?
The game began on New Year’s Day of 2014 at 12:30 PM. This was the much anticipated “Quake at the Lake” game. A much anticipated event which saw the overnight near doubling of the Player’s Association and the first inclusion of women in the Game of Kings. The game got off to a quick start with the first half inning ending abruptly on a Triple Play. The early game saw no scoring at all until the home batting team finally broke through in the bottom of the 2nd inning, but as the game carried on into the 3rd inning disaster would strike in the form of a State Park Ranger mad with power. Objecting to the consumption of alcohol within the park and possessing a vile hatred of all forms of base and ball sport, the ranger ejected the participants from the field, indefinitely delaying the game in the top of the third inning.
And so it would remain until a new field could be found and a majority of present players could participate. There were attempts on multiple occasion over the course of that year to kickoff the game again but the stars never aligned. That was until, as 2014 was drawing to a close, enough of the participants were able to gather at Lotus Park and the game was back on! On December 27th at 11:30 AM the game resumed, this time as the running of the 2014 Winter Classic. With the players in the spirit to play six innings of ball that day, the game lasted around four more hours until the eighth inning was completed. When the final out was recorded, a grounder to the left side converted into a field’s choice by “The Natural”, it ended what was, and will likely forever remain, the longest chapter in the sport’s storied history.
