Texas high school teams reflect on record-breaking 23-inning game

MIDLAND, Texas (KMID/KPEJ) – According to Chasing MLB Dreams, only one in every 200 high school baseball players will be drafted by a major league team. The 42 rostered players for Midland and Odessa High got to experience their major league moment on Saturday.

The two rivals set a new Texas UIL record for longest game when Midland defeated Odessa 4-3 in a six-and-a-half-hour, 23-inning battle. According to MaxPreps, the previous record was a 22-inning clash between McAllen and McAllen Memorial.

“It felt great because we won. It felt relief because of the length of the game, but it just felt great because we won because we were playing to even up the series,” Josh Hulin, Midland High head baseball coach, said.

It was game two of a three-game District series. Odessa had won the series opener on Thursday. Game two began Friday at 4:30 at Odessa’s Pressly Field. The Bulldogs and Bronchos battled for 14 innings and roughly four hours before the game had to be suspended due to darkness (Pressly field does not have stadium lights).

The game resumed Saturday afternoon at Midland’s Zachery Field with Midland leading 3-2. The Bronchos scored a run to tie the game at 3-3, and that score remained through the 22nd inning.

In the top of the 23rd, Midland had a runner on third and senior Wyatt Krueger at the plate. Krueger successfully put down a squeeze bunt, scoring the go-ahead run to take a 4-3 lead.

“It was an exciting feeling, but it was also, it wouldn’t have been possible had the runners in front of me not gotten on,” Krueger said.

The Bulldog defense held on in the bottom of the 23rd to bring the historic showdown to a close. The game broke the state record for longest game and came up just two runs short of the national record.

Astonishingly, both teams only threw four pitchers each for a total of 602 pitches.

The win was that much sweeter for Coach Hulin, who is in his first season as the head coach for the Bulldogs. Hulin was formerly the head coach at Odessa and left his post to take the job at Midland. Odessa head baseball coach Jerod Couch was Hulin’s top assistant at Odessa.

“I hate that there had to be a loser. And especially with it being a good friend,” Hulin said.

“It’s fun. We’re competitive just like all these kids are so of course I want to beat him every time I play him, but we have a good friendship and it’s really fun coaching and competing against him,” Couch said.

After the 23-inning affair, the teams played eight more innings on Saturday to determine the series champion. Midland won game three again by a score of 4-3, clinching the series victory and completing a day that will bring both teams lifetime memories.

“You know, we wish all these guys could play in the major leagues someday and they’re not. And they’re not going to play high-end D1 baseball, all of them,” Hulin said. “But what they are going to be able to do is in 10, 20, 50 years is when the get back together, they’re going to have this memory that they get to talk about, laugh about, probably exaggerate even more than was it really was, but that’s the cool thing about high school sports is that you create memories and I’m glad for that.”