Part of the beauty of baseball is how the same sport can take on such drastically different personalities. It's hard to believe these two games on different sides of the Pacific were played under essentially the same rules.

First, a Japanese high school game was forfeited after Shunshukan took a 66-0 lead in 1 1/3 innings over Kawamoto technical high school. The starting pitcher for Kawamoto needed more than 250 pitches to record four outs.

"At that pace the pitcher would have thrown around 500 pitches in four innings," the Kawamoto coach said, according to Reuters. "There was a danger he could get injured."

Gee, you think, coach? I think his arm might have been a little sore afterward anyway. Guess nobody else could pitch that day?

And then there was Thursday night/morning's game in San Diego, the longest major-league game since 1993. In the Rockies' 2-1 victory that ended after 1 a.m. Pacific time, nobody scored until the 14th inning – when both teams scored once – and the Rockies pushed an unearned run across in the top of the 22nd.

Some strange numbers:

• Three Rockies pitchers retired 23 consecutive Padres batters from the second to the 10th inning.
• Padres pitchers tied a team record with 20 strikeouts and their Rockies counterparts set a team record with 17.
• Had the game continued past the 22nd, winning pitcher Kip Wells probably would have pitched one more inning, then taken up a position and be replaced by infielder Clint Barmes, because the Rockies had no players left. "That would've been interesting," Colorado manager Clint Hurdle told the Associated Press. "That would've been another thing that I've never been a part of. That would've been the first move I ever made where no one second-guessed me."