Throwback Thursday: "The Rick Camp Game," A Sloppy, Silly, Fireworks-Aided 19-Inning Classic

Each week, VICE Sports takes a look back at an important event from sports history for Throwback Thursday, or #TBT for all you cool kids. You can read previous installments here.

Thirty-one years ago this week, on July 4, 1985, the New York Mets faced the Atlanta Braves in what was supposed to be a ho-hum game followed by your standard fireworks display. Over the course of eight and a half hours, the definition of "ho-hum" would be expanded to include flooded outfields, Keith Hernandez hitting for the cycle, and a relief pitcher named Rick Lamar Camp extending the game to a 19th inning with what would be his only MLB home run.

There have been longer games, by innings and by time, and many other games in which a Hall Of Very Good player hits for the cycle or a pitcher gets a big hit, and some other games in which several of these things occurred at the same time that Lenny Dykstra was also on the field. And yet only the contest that would forever be known as The Rick Camp Game has all of that, plus fireworks. If it isn't one of the greatest games in Major League Baseball history, then certainly it was one of the most ridiculous, and most ridiculously fun. VICE Sports talked to three people who experienced this magical night, one on his television screen as a young kid on Long Island; another as a college-aged Mets fan listening from his car while driving home after last call; and one while going 0-for-7 for the Braves after replacing Glenn Hubbard at second base in the sixth inning.

"I'm not sure we were thinking of it as a memorable game until after it was all over," former Braves infielder Paul Zuvella recalled via email. "It was just one of those games you just weren't sure how it was going to end. When Camp hit the home run, it was like 'Can you believe this?!'"

The few thousand at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium who stayed to the end, or even arrived well into the night to witness the game, had no choice but to believe it. "It was one of those eerie games that combined poor weather with rain delays, strange plays, and two teams who didn't want to lose the game, particularly when it kept going and going," Zuvella wrote. "When Camp hit the home run, we certainly felt like this was our game to win."

The broadcast, as uploaded onto YouTube recently, is not complete. That is not to say it's brief. It contains most of the first nine innings, as rebroadcast on what is now the hulking remains of ESPN Classic, and also innings 12 to 19, from the original TBS rebroadcast. The hallmarks of a Ted Turner-run entity are all over the game, from repeated, near-compulsive mentions of other Turner employees and properties, with ads for CNN and Braves-endorsed goods intermingled with per-inquiry ads for direct order swimsuits and Statue Of Liberty belt buckles.

William Stegemann was only 11 years old on July 4, 1985, and firmly in the grips of Mets Fever by that point. "My mom had taken me and my siblings to Tanner Park in Copiague (my hometown) to watch fireworks, not a fireworks show, just some of her friends throwing fireworks around," he said. "I mostly sat in the bed of a pickup trying to avoid getting set on fire as light explosives lit by drunks rained down on us." He needn't have worried about the game part of that ordeal, as it was delayed until well after 9 pm. In a 2013 podcast in which Stegemann rewatched this game with Matthew Callan, he mentioned that he was disappointed to have missed starting pitcher Dwight Gooden, who was pulled after two and a third innings in what would be an outlier in his otherwise magnificent 1985 season.

Greg Prince, who would later go on to co-found the Mets blog Faith And Fear In Flushing and write books like the recent Amazin' Again, was watching the game at a local bar, and could tell early on that it would be crazy. "I think the first clue was when [Mets manager] Davey Johnson was told he had to pinch-hit for Roger McDowell … because the umpires chose to interpret the Met lineup in their own way," he said. "The Mets were playing the game under protest pretty darn early at that point."

Over on TBS, the Atlanta Braves broadcasters, Ernie Johnson, Sr., Skip Caray, and a young-ish John Sterling, were the low-key MVPs of this hellish ordeal, wondering out loud if this game would ever end as the last MARTA bus departed from Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The recently-defunct Georgia Championship Wrestling is invoked when Claudell Washington tries (and fails) to field what would become a Keith Hernandez triple. "This is a game where Lloyd Bridges would make a great outfielder," exclaimed possible "Sea Hunt" fan Sterling in the bottom of the fifth. News of Steve Howe's release by the Los Angeles Dodgers due to his cocaine use is mentioned during the 13th, albeit with sugar coating from the broadcasters duly noting his "depression." In the interest of Turner synergy, the broadcast also made fans aware that Craig Sager (with his family), Journal-Constitution Braves beat writer Chris Mortensen (with his 14 year-old daughter in the press box), and then-current Atlanta Hawks coach Mike Fratello were all in attendance.

Amid these Fratello-haunted, rain-soaked nightmare conditions, it was easy to miss Keith Hernandez hitting for the cycle. It could be said that Hernandez would not have had his triple had he not hit into what was visibly a water hazard, and it could further be pointed out that he didn't complete his cycle until a single in the twelfth; he finished 4-for-10 for the evening. It is still quite an achievement, and is perhaps more so because it wasn't nearly the most memorable moment of the game.

Things got stranger as the game went on, and then kept going on. Davey Johnson was ejected in the 17th along with Darryl Strawberry, after arguing with the umpire over balls and strikes. Rick Camp was standing on the mound as that happened, and gave up what would have been the game-winning run in the 18th after a Lenny Dykstra sacrifice fly drove in Howard Johnson. At nearly 3:30 in the morning, the Braves were one pitch away from losing. Then Rick Camp, a career .060 hitter at that point, hit a long drive off Tom Gorman to tie the game at 11.

"I was speechless," Prince said. He was driving home from the bar with a friend after last call when Rick Camp homered. "My friend was speechless. Bob Murphy spoke for both of us, though, when he said to Gary Thorne over WHN, 'There are some ballgames you just aren't meant to win.' A few minutes later, I get home and the Mets are in the midst of scoring five runs in the top of the 19th. Some ballgames you just aren't meant to lose."

The Mets were not meant to lose the Rick Camp Game, as Camp gave up five runs in the 19th inning. He made the final out, at 3:55 in the morning, after the Braves tried rallied with two runs of their own. The final score of Mets 16, Braves 13, and the fireworks went off regardless, well after four in the morning, to the delight of those who stayed and likely non-delight of everyone living nearby.

This game was a rare memorable moment for the Atlanta Braves between their 1982 NL West championship and their decade-plus of NL East dominance in the 1990s and beyond. "I don't think any of us looked at this as a highlight of our season," Zuvella wrote. "It was a loss."

Camp would be released by the Braves after spring training in 1986, and would retire soon after, eventually becoming a lobbyist. In 2005, Camp was convicted of conspiracy, healthcare fraud, and two charges of money laundering for his part in defrauding a mental health facility in Augusta, Georgia for over $2 million. He died in 2013 at age 59 of natural causes.

The 1985 Mets finished the season at 98-64, three games behind the eventual National League champion St. Louis Cardinals, but still seven wins better than the World Series champion Kansas City Royals. For all of the joy that the 1986 team would suck from the Boston Red Sox and claim for themselves, the '85 Mets had a magical combination of young and uncorrupted talent, veteran leadership that would soon corrupt that talent, and, in a very late stretch acquisition, Larry Bowa.

"As an 11-year-old kid in a nowhere town on Long Island I could identify with the '85 Mets because they were still underdogs," Stegemann said. "By the time the '86 season I was already a little jaded and like every Mets fan I knew, I expected the '86 team to go all the way … When I think of the Mets in my memory it's almost always of the '85 team because of that sense of innocence that came along with it."

Although it wound up not meaning much in the standings, the Rick Camp Game has a secure place in the history of both teams, even as it found them at a moment when they were going in different directions. The New York Mets were a year away from winning their second World Series, and the Atlanta Braves were on the verge of a very long rebuild, which would see them re-hiring former skipper Bobby Cox as their GM and eventually manager and culminate in 14 division championships in 15 years, five pennants, and a win in the 1995 World Series. But on the Fourth (and fifth) of July 1985, these two teams were equals—equally afflicted, equally exasperating, and equally determined—in a game that to this day has none.

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