Baseball’s pace-of-play rules have made for quicker games than in recent memory. But they’ll be hard-pressed to approach the all-time record set by the Giants and Phillies in 1919
No matter how many rules Major League Baseball adds to speed up play, it is safe to say that no two teams will ever be able to beat the record for the fastest nine-inning game in big-league history: 51 minutes. Not one hour and 51 minutes. Fifty-one minutes.
On 28 September 1919, five days before the Cincinnati Reds met the Chicago White Sox in an infamous World Series tattered by gambling, the New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-1, in New York in the first game of a doubleheader – in 51 minutes.
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