Fireworks at 4am: Rick Camp and the cruel quintessence of baseball

Wayne Minshew was determined to fire some rockets.

Director of public relations and promotions for the Atlanta Braves, Minshew had orchestrated the team’s annual Fourth of July fireworks show for after the final out of a holiday home game.

The year? 1985. The opponents? Those pesky New York Mets. A bumper crowd of 44,947 flocked to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, inspired more by Minshew’s pyrotechnics than the fifth-place Braves. TBS carried the game live, with a 7:40 scheduled start time. Dwight Gooden started for New York, Rick Mahler for Atlanta. (1)

From the outset, there was a sense of foreboding, symbolised by moody skies above the stadium. Dark clouds delivered a downpour shortly before first pitch, delaying proceedings until 9:04 pm. (2) 

The Mets and Braves traded runs in the first inning, only for the heavens to open again in the third – this time for 41 minutes. The second delay knocked Gooden and Mahler from the game, which reconvened around 11:00 pm, a soggy crowd already thinning out. 

When play resumed, Ken Oberkfell put Atlanta ahead, 3-1, with a two-run doubles, only for the Mets to respond with RBI knocks from Wally Backman, Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter, swinging the score to 5-3, New York. The Braves got one back in the fifth, only for the Mets to pull ahead, 7-4, by the eighth, courtesy of a Darryl Strawberry single and a Hernandez homer.

Mets manager Davey Johnson turned to Jesse Orosco, his two-time All-Star reliever, for the eighth, hoping to preserve a three-run lead with minimal stress. Oberkfell led off with a single, however, before Rick Cerone walked. Orosco rebounded to record successive outs, only to walk back-to-back hitters, forcing in a run. Johnson had seen enough, hooking Orosco for Doug Sisk, who promptly relinquished a three-run, go-ahead double to Dale Murphy. 8-7, Braves.

At that point, Atlanta skipper Eddie Haas played his ace card, turning to future Hall of Fame closer Bruce Sutter. However, after striking out Ray Knight, Sutter allowed three straight singles, blowing the save and tying the game at 8. The Braves then went quietly in the ninth to force extra innings.

Terry Forster settled in for Atlanta, pitching scoreless ball through the twelfth, while Sisk matched him pitch-for-pitch. Save for Hernandez singling to complete a cycle in the twelfth, the game meandered after midnight, losing its sharpness while shedding spectators by the batter.

Howard Johnson finally nudged the Mets towards victory with a two-run homer in the top of the thirteenth, only for Terry Harper to respond with a two-out, two-strike, two-run blast of his own in the bottom half, knotting the score at 10. Down to their last strike, the Braves pulled out a remarkable surge to stay alive.

With less than half of the original attendance still in situ, stadium security left the gates open as curious passersby replaced departed ticket-holders for free. Eyeing floodlights in the early morning gloom, drivers on the I-85 highway diverted to the ballpark – at 1 am, then 2 am, then 2:30 am – to query the commotion. (3)

The assembled throng – both paid and opportunistic – saw Rick Camp, a journeyman sinkerballer, pitch for Atlanta in the seventeenth. Born and raised in Georgia, the 32-year-old Camp was in his ninth big league season – all with the Braves – playing out the string as a long reliever and occasional starter. Camp pitched a clean seventeenth, including a strikeout of Strawberry, who protested a strike call from home plate umpire Terry Tata. “The zone changes at 3am,” Tata told Strawberry, who was ejected, along with Johnson, for arguing. (4)

Such was the impasse, when the Braves also went scoreless in the seventeenth, Hernandez dipped into the clubhouse to call his brother, Gary, to tell him the game was still going on – lest his sibling send out a search party. (4)

In the top of the eighteenth, Lenny Dykstra put the Mets ahead, 11-10, with a sacrifice fly. In the bottom half, Tom Gorman retired the first two Braves, edging New York’s win probability to 96%. Those odds seemed generous to Atlanta, whose fate was left in the hands of Camp, with nobody left on the bench to pinch-hit. (1)

A career .060 hitter, Camp was notoriously awful at the plate. “People thought Rick couldn’t hit,” Murphy later told Joe Posnanski. “We knew he couldn’t hit.” (5) Entering that plate appearance, indeed, Camp had logged just 10 career hits, with only four going for extra bases. Once, with Camp at the plate, Braves announcer Skip Caray told parents to cover their children’s eyes, because ‘this is not gonna be pretty.’ (6)

Inarguably complacent, the Mets waved their outfielders in while Camp twirled his bat like a reticent dilettante – Carter stepping out in front of home plate to emphatically waft his teammates closer. Perhaps offended, Camp took an almighty rip at the first pitch, fouling it back to the screen.

In the boxscore, that hack became just another foul ball, but to the trained eye, it was a portent of drama to come. Up in the broadcast booth, narrating the game on Braves radio, John Sterling – yes, that John Sterling – read Camp’s swing and issued a prescient edict. “Ernie,” said Sterling, referring to Ernie Johnson Sr., his broadcast partner. “If he hits a home run to tie this game, this game will be certified as absolutely the nuttiest in the history of baseball.” (6)

Adjusting to Camp’s explosive swing, Gorman came back with an 0-1 breaking ball, way off the plate outside. Nevertheless, true to his fluctuating strike zone decree, Tata called a strike, putting Camp in a serious hole and the Mets on the cusp of victory.

“It’ll be an oh-two pitch,” said Sterling, as Gorman came set, the clock ticking towards 3:30am. “And he hits it to deep left. Heep goes back! It…is…gone! Holy cow! Oh, my goodness! I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Rick Camp! Ricky Camp! I don’t believe it! That certifies this as the wildest, whackiest, most improbable game in history.” (6)

At third base, Knight looked to the heavens, palms to the sky, as Camp’s implausible blast soared high above the infield. Incredulous, Mets left fielder Danny Heep pursued the arcing parabola, only to bury his head in his hands as it disappeared over the fence. When the ball landed under the scoreboard, Heep dropped to his knees, completely aghast, as bedlam engulfed the remaining gaggle of fans. (6)

Baseball, though, is a capricious game of failure. Of unpredictable highs and unforeseen lows. Of fluctuating emotion at the whims of lady luck. Camp, for a moment baseball’s most celebrated slugger, returned to the mound in the nineteenth inning and promptly fell apart. The Mets scored five runs on RBIs from Knight, Heep and Backman, taking a 16-11 lead that would surely hold. Right?

Still unconvinced, New York turned to Ron Darling, its erstwhile ace, for the first relief appearance of his big league career. Darling retired the first batter he faced before Claudell Washington reached on an error. Darling rebounded to secure the second out, only to walk successive Braves. Harper then laced a two-run single, making the score 16-13 and bringing the tying run to the plate. And who went to bat for Atlanta in that last chance saloon? Why, Rick Camp, of course. Who else?

Alas, Camp had exhausted his allotment of miracles. Darling struck him out on four pitches to end the game, at 03:55am, eight hours and 15 minutes after the scheduled first pitch. (7) The Mets won, 16-13, concluding a marathon contest that featured 29 runs, 46 hits, five errors, 37 runners left on base, 14 pitchers throwing 615 pitches, and 43 total players seeing action. No major league game had ever finished later – or was it earlier? – and both teams received a polite ovation after the final out, a token of appreciation from a wired crowd. (8)

It was at this point that Minshew faced his fireworks dilemma. “As long as there were people at the game, we were obliged to fire ‘em off, I thought,” he told reporters. And with around 8,000 fans still left in the ballpark, the Braves’ public relations czar sanctioned a belated Independence Day show. (9) And so, the first rocket was lit at 04:01 am, bound for the unsuspecting sky above an otherwise sleepy stadium. (7)

As the impromptu show commenced, the Braves received around 30 phone calls from concerned – and enraged – locals. (9) Minshew fielded complaints from some and queries from others. “It was so late, many thought the city was under attack,” said Braves owner Ted Turner. (7) The local police department also received calls, with some denizens fearing a Russian bombardment.

“Atlanta wasn’t bombed – it was just baseball,” read a subsequent AP headline, above the following explanation: “Bewildered residents called police around 04:00 am Friday to find out if Atlanta was being bombed. But it was just the belated Fourth of July fireworks at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where the Braves and the New York Mets had finally finished a 19-inning marathon.” (10)

After showering, speaking to reporters, and commuting from the ballpark, some participants did not fall into bed until 07:00 am. A fresh game awaited just over 12 hours later, at 7:40 pm, another signature baseball quirk. Factoring travel, stretching, batting practice and pre-game preparations, the Braves and Mets likely had around seven hours rest before going again. Fortunately for New York, Rick Aguilera pitched a complete-game five hitter, saving a demoralised bullpen in a 6-1 win before 28,085 fans. Rick Camp had the day – or at least the night – off.

Ultimately, neither the Mets nor the Braves qualified for the 1985 postseason. New York won 98 games while Atlanta lost 96. And sadly, after the season, Rick Camp was released by the Braves, never to pitch – or hit – in another major league game.

Falling on hard times post-retirement, Camp savoured cheers at occasional alumni events but otherwise slipped into mundane anonymity. In 2005, his name resurfaced in scandalous terms; Camp convicted, with three others, of conspiring to steal $2 million from an Augusta mental health agency. In a sad dénouement, the former big leaguer, author of perhaps the most farfetched home run in baseball history, served three years in a minimum-security prison at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, his demise complete. (11)

Released in 2008, Camp died five years later, aged 59, in Rydal, Georgia. And while his crime can never be condoned, Rick Camp remains one of the most remembered journeyman pitchers of all-time. Not for the 3.37 ERA in 942.1 career innings. Not for the 56 wins and 57 saves. Not even for the spending nine years with one team. Rather, Rick Camp is most fondly recalled for his bat – or at least for its most astonishing act. He may be the most celebrated .074 career hitter who ever lived.

More than Rick Camp himself, though, his iconic home run captured the cruel quintessence of baseball. It was the Fourth of July. It was extra innings. It was a hapless reliever hitting at 03:30 am. That said reliever clubbed a game-tying dinger, down to his final strike, spoke to the national pastime’s beautiful unpredictability. So, too, did the subsequent – almost instant – capitulation of the very same guy. The unlikely hero quickly coughed it up – a wry coda befitting the sport’s whimsy.

To this day, 40 years later, The Rick Camp Game still captivates us. Why? Because the incongruity dripping from its every pore invites us to ponder baseball’s ineffable charm. I mean, the game had John Sterling and Bruce Sutter with the Braves. It had Ron Darling pitching in relief. It had fireworks on the Fifth of July. It had a reliever hitting a clutch home run. And it had, in Gorman, a pitcher who surrendered two game-tying blasts yet somehow came away with the win.

Alas, we will never see its like again. Pitchers no longer hit, thanks to the universal designated hitter rule instituted in 2022. Extra innings are an endangered species, too, with games artificially truncated by the ‘ghost runner’ starting the tenth inning on second base. Indeed, since that rule was implemented in 2020, less than 0.2% of MLB games have stretched beyond thirteen innings, let alone nineteen. Rick Camp’s place in baseball lore is fairly safe, then, because no reliever is going yard in the eighteenth anytime soon.

Sources

1. Baseball Reference. [Online] https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL198507040.shtml.

2. Karpin, Howie. 162-0: Imagine a Mets Perfect Season. 2013.

3. Martinez, Michael. New York Times. [Online] July 6, 1985. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1985/07/06/issue.html.

4. Associated Press. [Online] July 6, 1985. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TS1JAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA7&dq=%22rick+camp%22+%2B+%22home+run%22&article_id=5555,6051467&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5pdnLt5GOAxUTUUEAHcKOCloQ6AF6BAgEEAM#v=onepage&q=%22mets&f=false.

5. Posnanski, Joe. Why We Love Baseball. 2024.

6. YouTube. [Online] April 14, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVpjWNfnHww.

7. Smith, Curt. Storied Stadiums. 2001.

8. Strubel, John. Metsmerized Online. [Online] July 3, 2014. https://metsmerizedonline.com/july-4-1985-no-end-in-sight/.

9. Thomas, Pete. Los Angeles Times. [Online] July 4, 1986. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-07-04-sp-544-story.html.

10. Associated Press. [Online] July 6, 1985. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3g1SAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA4&dq=%22rick+camp%22+%2B+%22home+run%22&article_id=1238,677221&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjf24Hmt5GOAxXAXEEAHaUYO4U4ChDoAXoECAQQAw#v=onepage&q=%22rick%20camp%22%20%2B%20%22home%20run%22&f=false.

11. Hyatt, Richard. If It Feels Like Leather, Shoot It. 2015.