One-hundred hours, 200 innings: local group is seeking to break a lofty baseball record

Here’s something you don’t ordinarily hear at a baseball game:

Leading off the top of the 119th inning…

But this is no ordinary game.

The Endless Game Foundation is sponsoring a 100-hour baseball game in Macken Park in North Kansas City this weekend with a number of goals in mind. The foundation’s motto is “Playing the game we love to help improve the lives of others.”

Conceived by foundation chair Scott Reinardy, the initial idea of the 100-hour game was to break the Guinness World Records record for the longest continuous baseball game, previously held by a group of ballplayers in Canada (83 hours, 13 minutes).

It quickly broadened to become a charitable event, with the goal of raising $300,000 for six local charities.

“If we were going to do this, we wanted to make it more than a self-serving ego trip,” Reinardy said. “Let’s see if we can do some good.”

All six charities are close to the hearts of the board members, including “Gift of Life,” a nonprofit organization that offers educational information to schools, civic groups and spiritual communities regarding organ transplants. Reinardy received a heart transplant in 2015, and he’s actively involved with Gift of Life.

The other charities that will benefit from the 100-hour game include Operation Breakthrough, Children’s Mercy Hospital, the Veterans Community Project, C You in the Major Leagues, the North Kansas City Animal Shelter and the North Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department.

Reinardy said the charities aren’t just receiving a share of the proceeds, they’re actively involved in helping the event happen and spreading the word about it.

Besides the expected requirements, like lights for the overnight games, a local recreational vehicle dealer donated the use of a few RVs for players to sleep in between shifts.

It’s an “all hands on deck” approach. All with a $0 budget.

Of course, you can’t have a baseball game, much less one that lasts for 100 hours (Thursday morning at 8 a.m. through Monday at noon), without players.

Reinardy enlisted his longtime friend and fellow senior-level baseball player Jerry Weaver to become the group’s vice chair and recruit. Weaver contacted players in local 55-and-over, 65-and-over, and “backyard” baseball leagues to fill the two teams of 30 players each.

While the majority of players are over 55, participants’ ages range from the low-20s to the low-70s. There are multiple combinations of fathers and sons, fathers and daughters and many other familial groups. The common denominator is their love of baseball.

Weaver also had to recruit a lot of volunteers, including umpires, scorekeepers (to make it official for Guinness) and peripheral support people.

Guinness had certain requirements to validate this effort as a record. They used World Baseball Classic rules, and the Endless Game Foundation added the idea of shifts. The 30 players on each team — dubbed “Strength” and “Courage” — were divided into groups of 10, with each taking four-hour shifts.

Reinardy and Weaver captained opposing teams in the first shift (8 a.m.-noon), which also took the fourth shift (8 p.m.-midnight). Other groups had 12-4 (a.m. and p.m.) and 4-8 (a.m. and p.m.) The “middle of the heat” and “middle of the night” teams are made up of younger players who can better handle the elements and/or and lack of sleep.

Reinardy and Weaver are best friends, but they wanted nothing more than to strike out the other while pitching. The game is a competitive one, but Weaver says the side-benefit of the format is getting to know players of different ages.

“Our games are competitive, but relaxed,” he said.

Weaver wore a T-shirt that said, “You don’t stop playing because you get old …” on the front, and, “You get old because you stop playing,” on the back.

“We have to preserve ourselves,” he said. “It’s really 60 players against 100 hours.”

Reinardy said the foundation anticipates this being an annual event to raise money for charity, though he doubts they’ll try to break the record every year. The logistics that Guinness requires are quite cumbersome.

He also said he’s not going to commit to it until this year’s event is done and he queries the board to make sure there’s enough interest to pull it off.

Right now, the goal is just to complete the 100 hours.

“There are things we’ve learned this year,” Reinardy said. “We know what it takes. Are there enough partners to put in enough time and effort to do that again?

“If this thing is going to survive, people are going to have to want it to survive.”

Halfway through the 100 hours early Saturday afternoon, the pace had slowed to about nine innings per four-hour shift. Strength led Courage 256 to somewhere around 180 (no one knew for sure), but the score wasn’t the most important part of the event.

Team members, besides donating their time and talents, were challenged with raising funds for innings played. It’s still possible to donate to the project in general (https://givebutter.com/jIYH42); donations can be made through Sept. 7.

Oh, there’s one other goal that may actually be the driving force of this quest for 100.

“Personally, this is about the record coming from Canada back to the United States,” Weaver said. “This is America, and baseball is America’s national pastime.”

Even if it takes 200-plus innings to prove it.

This story was originally published September 2, 2023 at 8:28 PM.