Japan Series extra innings

15 innings are the new record in the Series.

Game 8 would have been in Nagoya. Game 9 would have been in Chiba with an off-day following game 8. Unfair? Maybe. I think it had to do with some scheduling issues.

Yes, 5 home games to 3 would have been unfair, but a game 8 is not something you would exactly expect.

Thanks for the info before. But I wasn't asking about the longest game played, but rather the record for most extra inning games in a Japan Series. Has there been more than 2 before?

- Has there been more than 2 before?

Are you skipping the case of 2 ties?

2 ties happened only once in 1975 (Hankyu (4-0-2) Hiroshima) and that is the record.

Ten years and a Hanshin fan and you forgot the back-to-back extra-inning games (both of which Hanshin won in 10 innings) in the 2003 Japan Series? Shame on you.

I knew about one particularly ridiculous Japan Series in 1962 because it was the only one the Fighters won in their first 55 years of existence, there were 3 extra inning games and one tie and the Fighters (then the Toei Flyers) won Game 7 in 12 innings.

But other than that, no, so I just went and looked up the rest of these. Here are the years that there were extra-inning games in the Japan Series:

4 : 1992
3: 1962, 1995, 2010
2: 1950, 1970, 1975, 1986, 1994, 2003
1: 1953, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1965, 1966, 1969, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1996, 1997

(Tie game years: 1957, 1962, 1975 (2), 1986, 2010)

So as you can see, extra-inning games themselves are not rare, but MANY extra-inning games is fairly rare, AND in the last 10 years there haven't really been many extra inning games in the Japan Series at all. And clearly tie games is a BIG rarity. I think it may have something to do with how the length of tie games has changed over the years as well.

1992 was a fascinating Japan Series to look back at; 4 extra inning games with no ties. Seibu won all of the normal-length games, Yakult won 3 of the extra-inning games but then lost Game 7 at home. And their 3 extra-inning wins were all on home runs -- a walkoff grand slam by Toru Sugiura in Game 1, a solo homer by Takahiro "Bun-bun Maru" Ikeyama in Game 5, and a walkoff homer by Shinji Hata in Game 6.

Err -- don't I look silly. That is, the 1962 Japan Series had 4 extra-inning games, 3 were normal and 1 was a tie. So 4 extra-inning games in a Japan Series actually happened twice, in 1962 and 1992. My count got messed up with ties somehow when I threw it all into a spreadsheet.

I also didn't include the tie game in the 1953 Japan Series where the game got called 2-2 after 8 innings due to severe rain, because it wasn't a full-length extra-inning game...

(Westbay, do you have better data on all this sitting around? I just kinda scrounged it up off the NPB site hastily.)

Yes, I am ashamed of not knowing that Hanshin series had two extra inning games! But I have the excuse of living in New Zealand then, so I couldn't follow the series at all!