KBO | Sajik, 16 May 1987 — Four Hours Fifty-Six Minutes, Nobody Won

Choi Dong-won threw 209 pitches. Sun Dong-yol threw 232. Both of them finished the game.

On 16 May 1987 at Sajik Baseball Stadium (사직야구장), Lotte's Choi Dong-won (최동원) and Haitai's Sun Dong-yol (선동열) started against each other for the third and last time. Lotte scored twice in the second. Haitai got one back in the third and levelled it in the ninth. Then nothing at all, for six more innings, until the game was stopped after fifteen at 2–2. Four hours and fifty-six minutes.

The lines are what people quote. Sun faced 56 batters, gave up seven hits, struck out ten. Choi faced 60, gave up eleven hits, struck out eight. Sun's 232 pitches remains the most any KBO pitcher has thrown in a single game, and their combined 441 is still the most by two starters. Neither manager took either man out.

All three of their head-to-head starts happened on this mound. Sun won the first, 1–0, in April 1986. Choi won the second, 2–0, that August. This one settled nothing, which is exactly why it is the one that gets remembered. Korean reporting of the night has both pitchers cheerfully agreeing afterwards that they would have kept going into the sixteenth.

Choi died on 14 September 2011, aged 53. Lotte retired his No. 11 sixteen days later and laid the number out on the Sajik outfield grass, which is the photograph above. There is a statue of him at the ground now, a short walk from the mound where those 209 pitches were thrown.

Photos: 히히히; Cheolstar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0