One of the great highlights in baseball history. Pitcher Rick Camp, with a lifetime .060 batting average, hits the game-tying home run, the only one in his career, in the 18th inning to tie the ballgame at 3:20 AM!
I was at this game with my Dad. We were vacationing from Florida to see our Braves play. We stayed for the entire game. My Dad is gone now and I cry every time I watch this video. Will always be a precious childhood memory of mine.
That’s awesome! That’s the best keeper ticket stub! I was in Atlanta, but only at a party for the game, it was the longest game I’d ever seen....after so many hours, some people eventually would come in and out of the room to see if it was still going. If I remember right, driving home was still blindingly rainy and the yard was more than ankle deep in water. We had to wade through it, holding our shoes high, just to get to the door. Quite a night!
I watched the whole game- on and off thru the rain delays. At about 330am my father awoke and challenged me why I was still up. I told him but he didn't beleive me LOL.
I turned the TV off around 2AM, and listened to the rest on the radio. I woke my dad up and told him when Camp hit the home run. Oddly, he was less enthusiastic about it than I was. : )
I was there. I was 15 yrs old and attended the game with my family, half of whom, at about midnight, drove home to Marietta. My brothers and I stayed behind, witnessing camp's historic homerun and, later, the conclusion of the game. I sure do miss ernie, chief nocuhoma, fulton county stadium and all those memorable Braves players, chief among them dale murphy. And, quite honestly - I know I'm not alone here - I kind of miss the 80s in general. What a decade.
That’s so cool …what a moment to witness! I’ve been in Pennsylvania my whole life …but I was a big Dale Murphy fan as a teenager …emulated his batting stance/swing when we’d play in the backyard with shovel handles and a tennis ball. I also had the “Stickball” poster with he and Doc Gooden on it.
What a classic call -- even BEFORE the home run. Prophetic! Ah, I love old broadcasts of Braves and Cubs' games from the 80s. Such great announcers. Brings back fond memories of sports on good ol' basic cable channels like WTBS and WGN.
And the reason that John Sterling made the comment about it being the "nuttiest game in the history of baseball" before Camp's home run had to do with all the other unusual things that happened in that game, which are almost too numerous to mention. And Sterling got so loud on the Camp home run call that he lost enough of his voice that he couldn't help Ernie Johnson call the 19th inning very much.
Rick was married to a cousin of mine; I never got to meet him, but my sister did, and they became pen pals. I still have one of his baseball cards, and was about to turn 16 when this game aired. Epic game, watched the whole thing...lol RIP Mr. Camp
I was there! We were there til almost 5am and they still shot off the fireworks. Brings back memories. Fulton County Stadium, Chief Knock -a-Homa and that Braves roster.
I think I have seen this 50 times !!! Saw it on satellite Cable TV when it happened "in the wee small hours" of that July 5, 1985 morning at my home in San Juan PR and will never tire of viewing and reviewing it. I think it still is the most improbable thing that have ever ocurred on a baseball field, so unthinkable that insurance actuaries could go crazy trying to calculate the odds of what took place in that game. With no one else available to pinch-hit, a relief pitcher hits the only homer of his career to tie the game after two outs and two strikes in the 18th inning !!! For a moment he caught lightning in a bottle !!!
It is, as far as regular season games. Twice the Braves were down to their last strike in extra innings & hit game tying Homers. Game ended at 3:55 AM Eastern time.
And then they shot off the 4th of July fireworks that thousands of Braves fans had stayed to watch ! The next day, the Braves organization took a lot of flack for shooting off fireworks at 4 in the morning in downtown Atlanta !
That's another whacky anecdote to this game. Several people in downtown Atlanta called the police and complained and one person legend goes was in a panic thinking the city was under attack.
I watched this whole game live - I remember Rick Camp muttering as he rounded the bases. This is why MLB really should not have a curfew. The best thing about baseball is that in a long, long, 162 game season, something like this can happen.
In those days, WTBS showed replays of the game. I had worked that night until 2 a.m. When I got home I thought, good, the reply is late coming on tonight. so, i sat down to watch the game and in a few minutes realized it was live !!!!!!! i just couldn't believe it. And then, as the game unfolded and Camp came to bat, I thought, this must be a dream, the wildest dream anyone ever had !
Yeah, I noticed the Chief Knock-A-Homa running to the plate after Camp's home run. I think I can say with confidence that you will NEVER see a mascot like that at a baseball game again.
I love it at 1:32 the catcher motions to the outfielders to come in, no, way in, no, way, way in. Proof that even a blind squirrel stumbles across an acorn some days.
Rick Camp was the nicest professional player I’ve ever known. My father worked with his dad Fatz Camp in Trion. They were in the cotton trade. Every time we saw the Braves Rick would always walk over to the pick-nic area & greet us. RIP Fatz and Rick Camp. Also to my Dad Jim Hall.. Y’all made my childhood awesome
I went to this game. We had seats in the upper deck in center field-about 2 miles away. The game was so bad early and it was so hot, that we left after the first rain delay. John Sterling and Ernie Johnson woke me up screaming over the hotel tv at 3:25 am. What a game!
I can never watch this without smiling. This is why I love baseball. No other sport can make a hero out of the everyman the way baseball does, and it never gets old or routine. Every time it's special.
Only one season later Ray Knight would play a major role in an equally strange moment. World Series Game 6 1986. R.I.P. to Gary Carter, Bill Buckner, and by extension Donnie Moore. 😔B.W.
Rick Camp (#37) - may God rest his soul!!! I remember that game like it was YESTERDAY!!! While Mr. Camp may NOT have been one of the "greats of the game," he was STILL GOOD ENOUGH TO HAVE MADE IT TO THE MAJORS!!!
@@DNSKansas Ernie Johnson, Sr, member of the (to me, 1957 Boston Braves) that knocked off the Yankees in that year's World Series. I say Boston Braves because I feel Lou Perini way way too eager to wave the white flag as far as declining attendance in Beantown. If he had played the 1953 season in Boston, he just might have seen a drastic turnaround in the team's fortunes. But he used the excuse of Boston fans preferring the Red Sox and Ted Williams and declining attendance as an excuse to leave. By 1966 the Braves were in Atlanta. So what was the purpose in moving the first time? All he had to do was stick around in Boston one more season and see what would have happened. To me, the Milwaukee Braves never existed, and the only true Milwaukee team was the Brewers.
I was not at this game (I live in Florida), but I did record it too, and saw it live. Couldn't believe it. As Sterling's current partner would say, "Oh my goodness gracious."
I was at that game with two of my friends, we were all on our way back home to Connecticut after a post-graduation trip to Disney World. It was an incredible experience, couldn't believe the game wasn't called at some point because there were puddles in the outfield ! I believe game ended at 4AM and by the time we got to our hotel room and to sleep it was 5AM. Never forget it !!!
I stayed up until the end of that game. I will never forget them saying "If Rick Camp hits a home run, this will be the craziest game I have ever seen".
I HAVE BEEN A PHILLIES FAN FOR 53 YEARS AND I WATCHED THIS GAME ON JULY 4-5 1985 AND IT IS STILL HARD TO BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED! REST IN PEACE RICK WHO DIED ON APRIL 25,2013 JUST 48 DAYS AGO.
I watched this game. Camp actually ended the game with a strikeout, swinging on a bases-loaded 3-2 pitch from Ron Darling that was a bit too high. Had Camp HR the pitch, he would have had a walk-off grand slam, 2 HRs, 5 RBIs.
I remember Gary Carter waving the outfielders in (I was bleary eyed at 3:25 am) and then seeing Rick Camp absolutely crush the home run. I knew it from the moment it left the bat. And then to end the next inning the Mets pitcher threw a nasty slider to strike Rick Camp out. I started watching the game at 11:00 pm after arriving home from local July 4th fireworks. Rick Camp's home run is one of my favorite all-time baseball moments.
I was watching and I fell asleep...but I pressed record on the VCR so I could see the fireworks display after the game and I ended up getting this on tape.
and this is exactly why, kids, baseball is the best sport ever. What's amazing too is that there were that many fans at 320am still watching the game!! That's friggen dedication, especially given that in this time frame, the Braves sucked a big one!!
No, football is the greatest game ever. The fact that a major league pitcher put the ball right over the plate on an 0-2 count makes this wonderful? It was one of the dumbest, most stupid, idiotic pitches ever. But I bet everyone was better back then, too.
Practical Skeptic You must be a pathetic simpleton, trolling a year old post with an insipid insult. And I bet you thought you were being clever. What a dumfuq.
I was 12 years old when this game was played, and I listened to the whole game in bed. My favorite player, Keith Hernandez, hit for the cycle. Three hours after the game ended, I woke up to go to day camp.
It made the CBS news the next night- that they went thru with the July 4th fireworks show at about 4am and how the residents of the nearby ATL hood were frightened "Oh Lord they're bombin Atlanta!!!"
I watched this entire game. I was 12 and clearly remember thinking when Camp came to bat, "well it's over", and damn it if he didn't knock it out. I jumped off the couch silent screaming (since my parents were in bed) at the top of my lungs. Too bad my Braves lost, but this was one of the best reg season games of all time in my book.
I watched this game with my Grandma (who was a Braves fan since they were in Boston). I was supposed to leave at 7am on July 5 to go to my new college (was 18, fresh out of high school) for orientation. I kept saying "Grandma I need to get some sleep." and Grandma was like "it'll be over soon." After the game, they still have the fireworks (remember July 4th) and televised it as well. I never did go to sleep that night. Drove two hours to college, checked into my room for the weekend and fell asleep. Ended up missing half of the Friday activities. LOL
I saw this whole game because I was living in the Pacific Time Zone, I'm a Mets fan, Doc was the starter and I had the next day off. I'll never see a wilder regular season game.
I was 13 years old..watching the game in Arkansas on TBS..and woke my father up at 3 in the morning when I was screaming after Camp hit that homer. He yelled at me for lying to him about the baseball game still being on..until he looked at the tv and saw that the game was in the 18th inning.
I was at this game,12yrs old,I'm 47 now and still remember it like it was yesterday,takes me back to my youth,Dock Goodin started for the Mets,Murphy tied it up earlier andbullpin blew it in the 9th.
I was there with my dad and sister for that game.I was 15 .my best baseball memory ever .just too bad the braves lost 16:13.. we were in left field seats where Camp hit the home run .Crazy night
One of the most memorable games my Dad and I watched together on TV. Very long rain delay, Rick Camp hitting that miracle shot in the 18th keeping the game alive. The stadium still firing off the fireworks after 3:30 am and hearing news the next day of people calling the Police to ask if we were being bombed by Russia. What a game!
Love "Kid" waving the outfield in at the start of Camp's at-bat. Knight at third has a great reaction as well - like FML with his arms up in despair! Heep is stunned and so is Dykstra in Center (you can see him just give up and kneel for a split second) and I would love to know what Backman said to Camp as Camp was closing in on trotting to second! For a split second, you can see the Mets shortstop (I don't know who was playing shortstop) kneeling in submission most likely from the exhaustion and sheer shock of it all then when Camp passes third he passes Knight who stands arms crossed just below chest. I can Knight thinking, "FU!" as Camp touches the bag. Sterling is now a certified by the nation clown in the Yankee booth but I love his call on this one. What the hell was Gormon throwing - little league lobs? Great, great game!
I can't believe I watched the whole game. It was the 4th of July 1985 and we were having a pool party waiting for the fireworks behind our house. We were fortunate to have a mall that was right behind our house that had fireworks every 4th of July. We thought the game would eventually be called because of all the rain delays. But they played through and I we stayed up and watched it. That s one the great things about baseball their is no clock to run out the game. Yogi was right. It isn't over until it's over.
I didn't care how bad they were! Seeing all their games let you eventually see all the other teams too- good ones and bad ones. Now it's just Yankees-Red Sox on the cable channels more times than not :P
This and The Larry Bird Game against The Atlanta Hawks when Bird lit The Hawks up for 60 points. Sterling said that Bird's shooting that night was the best he'd ever seen put on display. That was the game where Bird was so hot, The Hawks players on the bench were giving each other high fives and falling off the bench after every Bird shot towards the end of the game (resulting in Hawks coach Mike Fratello fining those players and making them watch over and over again their reaction to Bird's shooting. Back in those days, you had a remote that had a button to hit when you wanted to rewind the video...and Doc Rivers tells a story where Fratello kept hitting rewind over and over again....pissed that Bird lit them up that night). I thought Sterling was a good to listen to when he was calling Braves games.
My brother and I along with his friends were going fishing that morning so we got a total of one hour sleep and never stopped talking about it for hours. Great memory.
I watched the whole thing on WOR Channel 9 in New York and remember hearing Ralph Kiner complain about not being able to get 'dinner'. That was code for booze.
My dad, brother, grandfather and I were at this game. My God, the memories...They shot the fireworks off around 4 in the morning and woke up the city of Atlanta.
I remember watching this game on WTBS. I stayed up as late as I could then went to bed. I listened to some of it on the radio. When I woke up I found out later that morning who won what a crazy extra innings game.
I wasn't there, but I do have a Rick Camp signed baseball on my shelf. I was 5 at the time, and I really wish the Braves would bring back those red, white, and blue uniforms at least during part of the season!
I belive this to be 1 of the 5 or so best moments in Atlanta braves history and Rick Camp was actually a pretty good guy that got mixed up with the wrong people unfortunately
1. Francisco Cabrera walk off hit in Game 7 of The NLCS against The Pirates. 2. Bob Horner shoving Chump Summers in a August 1984 game that become known as Pascual Perez Bench Clearing Game. 3. Game 6 of The 2021 World Series. 4. Game 6 of The 1995 World Series. 5. The game where The Braves clinched The 1991 NL West Title (after years of SUCKING).
I was a 12 year old Mets fan when this game was played. I stayed up until about 12:30-1:00 watching it on my black and white Tv in my bedroom. I would have stayed up later if it wasn’t for my Mom yelling at me to go to sleep from the next room.
I watched this game in the extra innings , I missed some of earlier action as I was out shooting some fireworks off with friends that 4th of July 1985 , but after we all returned and watched until the wee hours of follwing morning LOL !
I watched every minute of that game, which meant staying up to an obscene hour. When Camp fouled off the first pitch straight back, I muttered, "Wait a minute -- he was right on top of that pitch...." At some point around the 12th inning, TBS showed a shot of a fan who held up a sign reading, "What the HELL is going on?" Dale Murphy had a miserable night, striking out several times. He was the final out, too -- flied out to the warning track in left field with the tying runs on base. EDIT -- I watched the game again, and it turns out that Murphy walked and was on base when Camp struck out to end the game.
The Braves BITCH-SLAPPED BOTH The NL West divisions (starting in 1991, running through 1993)...then when we were switched to The NL L(East) in 1994 due to re-alignment (which we PROCEEDED to IMMEDIATELY start DOMINATING as our PERSONAL BIRTHRIGHT, from 1994-2005). 15 Divisional Titles....IN A ROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How did it feel CUBS FANS.....to wake up for12 straight years (the years that The Braves were in The NL L(East) being relegated to 2nd place during those 12 years. True, we only won 1 World Series Title during that amazing 14 year Streak! However, until recently. The Cubs went from 1907-2015!
I came in from parachute training in the Corps and grabbed my buddies and drove down to this game. I left at 0230 cause I couldn’t stay awake. I was falling asleep standing up. Woke up the next morning with everyone complaining about the fireworks at 0400.
Recall watching the begining of that game with my grandfather. and him telling me what happened about how it ended the next morning . And reading about it in the paper
IDK what's crazier.....this or Mitch Williams GW double at 4:40 AM where I snuck into the Vet at 1am after seeing the movie "The Firm" on the 2nd leg of a DH after an eternal rain delay.
Keith Hernandez wrote about that game in his book "If at first...". He said that after Camp's shot, Gorman turn to look at him, and he (Keith) couldn't look him in the eye. He also said that earlier in the game, when the Mets were batting, he went into the clubhouse and called his girlfriend in NY and was like "If I'm playing baseball at this hour, you can at least be awake" . LOL
I’ve seen many long games in Atlanta. 18 inning Giants win June 11 1985 and a game that officially ended in a 3-3 tie August 15 2002 against the Giants.
