Not much is absolute about that Sunday afternoon in New York. No one knows if the Phillies and Giants conspired to set a baseball record that nearly a century later still exists. No one is sure if the batters displayed unusual impatience, if the players showed extra hustle in exiting and entering the field, if the pitchers worked even faster than normal.
In fact, all that’s really certain about the Giants’ 6-1 Polo Grounds victory over the Phillies on Sept. 28, 1919, is that a game like that will never happen again.
The opener to a meaningless, season-ending doubleheader lasted just 51 minutes.