The Longest Nine-Inning Brewers Games

In Thursday's discussion of free agent pitchers living in Speculationville, I joked that a six-inning Doug Davis start combined with a three-inning Claudio Vargas save may set a team record for the longest nine-inning game.  I followed up by noting the current team record is a 4 hour, 22 minute slugfest in Chicago.  I also forgot scoring six more runs than the other guys means you win, but I digress.

I figured if I went to the trouble of looking up the record, I might as well post about the longest "regular" games in team history.  The following is a list of the 20 longest nine-inning games in Brewers history.  The dates are linked to the Baseball-Reference box score/play-by-play for each game.

Some random thoughts:

• The Brewers were 10-10 in those 20 games.  However, they lost all five 3:48 nine-inning games.
• 1999 and 2000 were long seasons in more ways than one.
• The 4th, 13th, 17th, and 20th games on the above list actually lasted 8 1/2 innings, leaving us all to wonder what might have been.
  
• You can see the impact of television on the length of games.  There are only 3 marathons from the 1980s and none before 1983.  The longest nine-inning game of the 1970s was a 3:42 loss to the Angels on 9/14/1979.  That game just barely edged the 49th game in Brewers history, a 3:40 loss to the Cleveland Indians on 6/3/1970.
• The longest nine-inning Seattle Pilots game was this 3:35 affair.
• The last time a nine-inning Brewers game finished in under two hours was 4/16/2004.  The Brewers starting pitcher in the 2-0 loss lasting 1 hour and 58 minutes?  None other than Doug Davis.  Now about that joke...
• Finally, "low-scoring" is subjective and some generous types may consider the 20th place game to fit the bill.  Personally, I like wondering how a 1-0 game can take 3:02 to play.