Previous Game:
July 3, 1985
Mets 6, Pirates 2
1985 Regular Season Game 76
July 4, 1985
Mets 16, Braves 13
Next Game:
July 5, 1985
Mets 6, Braves 1
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National League Standings, July 4, 1985

Box Score Game Memories Scorecard Mets Stats
Thru This Game

METS FANS SHARE THEIR MEMORIES OF THE JULY 4, 1985 GAME:

Dean
August 10, 2000
Funny how Tom Gorman is apart of two memorable games of the 85 season. How can any fan forget this one? Rain delay after rain delay, John Sterling, a Brave announcer at the time!?!?! He is still biased. Hernandez hitting for the cycle. Lenny Dykstra showing his scrappy play, after the Mets blow a late lead (around 8th inning). Rick Camp!!! Rick Camp!!! Danny Heep placing his hands over his head in disbelief. Carter and Hernandez playing all 16 innings, untill 4:05 AM!!!! Unreal...one of the most memorable of all time.

George Kaupp
June 1, 2001
I remember watching the game as a 12-year-old (and as a 13-year-old, as my birthday is July 5). Gooden's shortest outing to that point in his career, the two rain delays, the score tied 8-8 after nine innings. HoJo hits a two-run homer in the top of the 13th (I think), only to have Terry Harper hit an 0-2 slider off the left field foul (fair?) pole with one on in the bottom of the inning to tie the score. The Mets scratch across a run in the top of the 18th, only to have poor Tom Gorman hang an 0-2 forkball (why a forkball?) to Rick Camp (lifetime .036 hitter, five extra-base hits), who followed the old adage, "Swing hard, because you might hit the ball", and deposited the pitch over the left center field fence. Heep covers his head and Dykstra throws his glove up in the air in disbelief. Gorman struggling to complete the inning. The Braves then give up 5 runs in the top of the 19th (at least 3 unearned, thanks to errors by Claudell Washington and Camp himself, I think)...only to score two in the bottom of the 19th and have the tying run at the plate...Rick Camp again! However, Ron Darling strikes him out on three pitches.

I didn't realize Hernandez had hit for the cycle until years later. Poor Ronn Reynolds, didn't make it into the game because Carter caught all 19 innings, and Davey Johnson didn't want to use him as a pinch hitter in case Carter got hurt.

And then, after the game ends at 3:55, the fireworks go off at 4:01. Oops. Too much noise for sleeping citizens. What were they thinking?

Jim Snedeker
November 15, 2001
I believe this game was one of the weirdest ever. What made it so strange was that at one point in the extra innings, the Mets went ahead by a run, and it looked like they were going to win as the Braves batted in the bottom of the inning. Reason being is that Atlanta was out of pinch-hitters; the only people left to hit were pitchers.

So they send up reliever Rick Camp to pinch-hit. Camp (it was later revealed) had the lowest batting average of any active major leaguer as he stepped into the box. And what does he do? Of course--he hits a home run to tie it!

Well, the Mets ended up winning anyway, in 19 innings. As a fitting finale to this other-wordly game, the Braves went ahead with the planned post-game July 4th fireworks--at two in the morning!

Christopher Kuhn
January 10, 2002
Undoubtedly, the best regular season Mets game ever!! (Best Met game ever reserved for Game 6 1986 NLCS).

Who could ever forget Rick Camp hitting the homer in the 13th to keep it going for the Braves. I just couldn't believe my eyes. I stayed up for the entire game, right up until the fireworks display put on by Fulton County Stadium at 3:55 a.m. the morning of the 5th.

Jon
February 3, 2002
Just reading this boxscore is great entertainment.

flushing flash
February 7, 2002
I second that emotion, Jon. How often do you see 10's in the AB column?!?!

Try as he might, Doug Sisk couldn't blow this one for the Mets.

rob
March 10, 2002
my god I remember going to my aunts house and being pissed off I was missing the game on ch9 well got home at 11pm and what??? Mets in 4th inning??? I love late night baseball so I stayed up AS long as my 16 year old body could 2am I saw sisk almost blow it but orosco got out of it after dale murphy triple with bases loaded of sisk then Mets tie it up off bruce sutter ho jo again then I went to bed the ny post said it the next day when I bought it I couldnt believe it that they got the game on the paper

Vegas Mike
April 16, 2002
I watched the whole game on TBS. Skip Caray said something like "If Camp homers here this will be the wildest game of all time" just before Camp did homer. Walk into any bar tonight and 90% of the guys there will be better athletes than Camp was. The game lasted forever, and I still wanted more.

Joe Lanzisera
July 22, 2002
It's all been said already, but I'll add my vote to the masses. This is in the top 5 Met games of all time. I remember actually going to bed (not sure why) and listening to HoJo's homer on the radio. I got back up just in time for Harper to tie it. Hernandez hitting for the cycle was almost an afterthought. I had actually forgotten that Doc started this one - who remembers the first 9 innings. I will always remember the name Rick Camp, that's for sure.

Brian Collier
August 6, 2002
I was 16 years old and a big Braves fan at the time of this game. My brother and his fiance ask me to go along with my brother's buddy. I remember that we sat in the nosebleed seats at Fulton-County Stadium to watch Doc Gooden pitch. Then game the rain, and more rain. By the 9th inning, the majority of the fans left due to the rain. We moved our seats all the way up behind home plate. What a roller coaster of a game. One cannot imagine the emotions of that game unless you were there. Of course all looked gloomy for the Braves until Rick Camp hit that homer in the bottom of the 17th? Then blew it in the 18th to lose 16 to 13. I wish I had that ball! I remember the headeline in the paper next day, "Forget Game, Camp hits Homer!". We stayed till the fireworks at 4am. I found a foul ball after the game and still have it signed by my brother with the score and date on it.

angel
October 28, 2003
This is really the first baseball game I remember going to, and everyone hears about it. I was 10. My dad has always been a HUGE Braves fan, and he took my brother and I to Atlanta to see a game. We even got there early to watch batting practice. The rain poured down and the little guys scurried across the field to cover it with the morton salt cover. It was cool the first couple of times... The waves in the crowd were awesome... we kept it up because we were afraid they would call off the game.

To be honest I slept through several innings, I was 10; I think I passed out around midnight. I woke up around 3 when people were cheering hysterically. Dad had asked if we wanted to go back to the hotel but the fireworks were worth the wait. It was a memory never to be forgotten.

Minus to this is I dread commiting to watching a full game, never know how long it will be. However, games do seem much shorter to me as well when they only go 9 innings.

howard
May 22, 2004
Oh how this game brings back memories. I remember watching the game waiting for my friends to pick me up for July 4th party. When we returned at 3:30 AM I thought Sportschannel was rebroadcasting the game! What a shock.

Michael W.
March 14, 2005
What wasn't weird about this game? Dwight had I think his only bad outing of the year, Hernandez hitting for the cycle, and the game being tied in the 9th, the 13th, and at 3:00AM, the 18th by Rick Camp! I remember Camp being up in the bottom of the 19th with the Mets having 3-run lead and the Brave having two men on. If Camp would have homered again, they might still be playing.

john t greenpoint
August 23, 2006
Most entertaining night of watching Mets baseball. Went out at 9 or so after first rain delay, came home after 12 and to my amazement Met game was still on. Stayed up for whole game, could not believe what I was witnessing. At 12:30 though switched to Friday Night Videos to watch Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A video. Very happy to see my two joys in life at the time.

Jerry Walter
July 4, 2007
I was 12 years old and keeping score of this game in my bedroom. I think I ended up going to bed at 4AM, which is very late for a 12 year old. Each 4th of July I look up this game to re-hash the memories. Today I am a die hard Phillies fan, but I still have a place in my heart for the Mets of the mid 80s. Who could forget Rick Camp hitting a HR to tie the game? I wish I still had the score book for this game, but that's long gone. This game though still lives on as the longest game I watched and kept score of.

Michael
October 17, 2008
Games like this are what makes being a Mets fan special.

Elliot B,
June 4, 2009
I remember this game. I was living in Boston and came home from a daylong party (it was the 4th) and fell asleep watching this game. I woke up around 3:00 AM, saw the Mets playing the Braves and thought I was watching Sports Center coverage of the game. I suddenly realized that I was watching the actual game! I thought to myself "what the hell did I miss?!?!"

Jason
September 16, 2009
While I was not alive for this game, upon listening to the Mets broadcast tonight of their rain-delayed game in Atlanta, Gary Keith and Ron started talking about this game. I had never heard that much about it, so I did some research, and realized how crazy this game was! It really must have been a thrill to see live!

Witz
March 31, 2010
Too many memories of this one to condense here, but as I recall Hernandez was not having a good season and this game propelled him to a great second half. Also, when the Mets went down a run in the 8th, you just knew they were going to score in the 9th. The Camp HR was incredible as was Heep's exasperated reaction. I was actually rooting for Camp to hit another one when he ended the game, just not wanting the game to end; who knew what might be coming around the next corner?

Finally, looking at the box score I forgot about the 2-run 13th inning -- I wonder what the record is for most different extra innings scored in, in one game? This one has to be close with three, or six, depending how you look at it.

Brian Howarth
March 4, 2011
I was born in 1973. My Grandmother, who lived in Tucker, GA, took me and my cousin Tim to this game. Tim and I were a month apart and this was my first MLB game.

We stayed all the way through the fireworks. We sat through every rain delay and after the last delay, we moved down to left center because I was a HUGE Dale Murphy fan.

I remember the intense waves going on during the game and how the upper deck went one direction and the lower deck went another direction. My poor Grandmother had to drive us back after the fireworks, walking to our car at 4:30 AM and then the drive home. My cousin and I passed out immediately.

To extend this luck even further, my Grandmother went to the 7-6-86 game where Bob Horner hit 4 jacks in one game at Fulton County.

Even though my first MLB game was 19 innings, my next game I attended was a White Sox game at the Old Comiskey and it went extra and then the next game I went was back in Atlanta and it went to extra innings. I also witnessed a 16-14 game between the Braves and Expos and got to see The Murph finally take one yard.

Keep in mind, I grew up in Oklahoma so attending a MLB game was a treat for this young baseball fan. My grandmother passed away 9 years ago and I will always have the memories of this game and many others to put a smile on my face every time I think about how much I miss her.

NYB Buff
October 10, 2023
Rick Camp's home run in the 18th inning off Tom Gorman prolonged this marathon and gave Rusty Staub a rare opportunity to run the bases. Pinch-hitting for Gorman in the top of the 19th, Staub was walked intentionally and stayed in the game since there was nobody left on the Mets bench to serve as a pinch-runner. Rusty moved around from first to third base on Ray Knight's double and later came home on a single by Danny Heep. This was the 1,189th and final run scored by Staub in his career.

I can't imagine what it was like for the 41-year-old Rusty to be baserunning at four o'clock in the morning when he just wasn't doing it anymore.



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