Published July 4, 2025

(Note: When I began writing this story more than a year ago, I imagined it and the world being better at the time of publication. I’m sorry neither is. Still, I hope it brings you joy, or at least a break from anything that has you down.)

♥

Get in. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. Or curfews.

Good thing. This will take awhile.

“Back to the Future” opened on July 3, 1985. The next day, the Mets and Braves played 19 innings, also known as the Rick Camp Game.

This game.

Happy “Rick Camp Game” Day!

“That certifies this game as the wackiest, wildest, most improbable game in history!” – John Sterlingpic.twitter.com/WkWnk1gYFI

— Braves on TBS (@BravesOnTBS) July 4, 2024

Happy anniversary to that 2024 tweet! Happy 40th to the Rick Camp Game!

Not counting rain delays, it lasted 6 hours, 10 minutes. With pregame and in-game delays, the night’s feature presentation at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium took up 8 hours, 15 minutes.

An unusual confluence of events meant that a baseball fan, on her day off, could have waited patiently for the game to start on her TV …

… watched a few innings …

… decided to go see “Back to the Future” upon the second rain delay …

… could have seen the movie and had dinner afterward …

… and returned home surprised to be able to see more live baseball. And witness a final few innings that people still talk about 40 years later.

Not just could have. Did. This is her story, my story of that unplanned double feature. Dinner and a movie, Carly’s day off, July 4, 1985.

It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame flashback. And a movie. Let’s play two!

First, a disclaimer

I began writing this story a year-plus ago, in better times. My goal was to make it the best I’ve ever written and publish it today. I accomplished half of my goal, the easy part. It’s published.

Life happened. I’ve been broken since the election and haven’t worked since Nov. 3. After sleeping 16 hours a day for four months, I began working on this story again a little bit at a time. When I realized it was never going to be great, I aimed for it being done.

And I started throwing everything into the pot, like Chidi making chili on “The Good Place.”

This story is supposed to be fun. I’m not creating art here, not telling the story the way I would for my employer, not getting paid by the word — or at all.

Know that you’re in for a ride, and that I’m throwing a lot at you.

Feel free to get out of the DeLorean whenever you want. I think you’ll enjoy what you see in the time you’re here, and I’ll be grateful if you stick around at all. If I could, I’d distract you all day, but this is all I have for you. I hope it’s enough.

Those who read from start to finish are probably in that sweet spot of loving the movie or baseball, or both, just enough to appreciate the meat in the chili but also the beans and seasoning and maybe even the Peeps and M&M’s. At least a little?

(Note: If you’re viewing on a mobile device, you might have to refresh once for the video imbeds to display in the right order. I don’t know why.)

There’s something here for almost everybody, but maybe too much for anybody. All told, this story has been waiting to be written for 40 years, and today it feels like it took that long to write it. I’m the only person who could tell it. I lived it.

Enjoy.

Next, we gotta get back in time

On July 4, 1985, Michael J. Fox was the funny guy who played the preppy young Republican on the TV show “Family Ties.” He had done “Teen Wolf,” but it hadn’t been released yet.

Ronald Reagan was president.

“Ronald Reagan?? The actor??”

Sorry, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s get back to 40 years ago today.

Future Mets reliever Jared Hughes was born July 4, 1985. Future Braves reliever Lucas Harrell was a month and a day old. Their future teams could have used them that night.

The Bears were the reigning Super Bowl champions. The Tigers were reigning World Series champs. The Lakers’ NBA Finals win over the Celtics was still a fresh memory. Boris Becker was about to introduce himself to the world, winning Wimbledon over the weekend as an unseeded 17-year-old.

Oh, and since we’re mixing the worlds of movies and real life, consider this: A month before this Braves game I’m writing about, Ferris Bueller, Cameron Frye and Sloane Peterson saw the Braves play the Cubs at Wrigley Field, if only in the cinematic universe.

It’s complicated, and to complete the scene, they all had to attend a Cubs game at Wrigley against the Montreal Expos in September of that same season, but in the world of the movie, Ferris Bueller’s day off was June 5, 1985.

The Braves beat the Cubs that day, 4-2 in 11 innings.

Only 11 innings? Just wait a month, boys and girls. Just wait a month.

More fun facts about July 4, 1985

The world’s population was an estimated 4.9 billion people (it’s 8.2 billion now).

The future? That’s where Live Aid awaited, but only nine days away. Six days after that, Christa McAuliffe was chosen to be the first schoolteacher to fly on the space shuttle.

By July 1985, some of us could tell you every singer from start to finish in “We Are the World” without hearing the song again to jog our memory. … New Coke had flopped. Fast. It was going away. We won. New Coke, we hardly knew ya! The same year, we got Cherry Coke.

Nintendo was about to give us the Super Mario Bros. game — and let’s face it, Nintendo itself.

They hadn’t found the Titanic wreckage yet, but they were close. … You couldn’t get Windows 1.0 yet, but you were close. … The “yacht rock” era had ended, although we hadn’t gotten the memo yet (and didn’t even know to call it yacht rock).

Nineteen hundred eighty-five was a pivotal year in the establishment of the Domain Name System for the internet. The first registered domain name was symbolics.com. The U.S. decertified Route 66.

It was also the Year of the Spy. Twenty countries signed a U.N. treaty outlawing torture. The U.S. was not one of them.

Do you remember? Can you?

What did you do on July 4, 1985? Had you been born yet?

What can I tell ya? It was a long time ago. It was the last summer for years when you could say “Good evening, and what can I tell ya?” and not have people think you got that from Dennis Miller on SNL.

We still knew how to be bored. Our attention spans, and what we did with them, were different. We still knew how to be unreachable when we wanted.

I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of a selfie.

Not to hit you over the head with this, but it’s been 40 years! Besides, hitting people over the head is Biff’s job.

Uh-oh, we’re getting ahead of ourselves again.

But since I mentioned Biff: I mean Biff Tannen, not Biff Pocoroba. That Biff, a catcher, had played his final game the previous July after a 10-year MLB career (all with Atlanta). Rick Cerone and Bruce Benedict caught the 19-inning game for the Braves on July 4, 1985.

The Braves (34-41) were good that year only in the romantic comedy “The Slugger’s Wife,” which was released before baseball season. The Mets (40-35) hadn’t won a World Series since 1969, having beaten the Braves in baseball’s first NLCS, but if you were patient, you would soon see most of these Mets win another.

The Mets and Braves weren’t great, but it was baseball. On TV. On a holiday. The Fourth of July. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and … 19 innings? Didn’t see that coming.

The part where I discuss nuclear bombs

The Cold War simmered, two years removed from Reagan’s “evil empire” speech and the movie “WarGames,” not quite two years since “The Day After” gave us nightmares. We were listening to Sting’s “Russians,” from his album released a month before this Mets-Braves marathon.

Long before it became a Hershey’s commercial, the 1982 song “I Melt With You” by Modern English was influenced by the Cold War. How many danceable songs were still on the radio in 1985 and were about making love as an atomic bomb fell?

Events in 1985 were a major turning point.

The Pentagon said, “OK, fine. War with these bombs would cause nuclear winter, yes.” Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, met in Geneva for a summit that led to significant change. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War received the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a role in fostering awareness that led to disarmament talks.

We weren’t quite over it all in July 1985, yet we somehow knew we were safe on this Fourth of July. It was a Thursday night. (Please indulge me.)

What are the odds?

I embrace movie vibes without apology, and the line stayed with me for 40 years — although I erroneously thought it was from “WarGames.” Dabney Coleman had a central role in that movie, and decades later I could hear his voice delivering the line. It wasn’t until I did my research for this story that I realized this is from “The Man with One Red Shoe.”

That movie didn’t come out until two weeks after the Rick Camp Game, but I like to think that when it did, it confirmed our comfort zone on July 4, 1985. The script had been written long before, and the film was in the can, as they say.

“What are the odds of the Russians attacking on a Thursday night? Come on!”

Dabney Coleman had already said that. He knew. It was out there in the world, if only in stealth mode. We could relax and watch some baseball on this Fourth of July. A Thursday night. Dr. John McKittrick of “WarGames,” Jack Flack of “Cloak & Dagger” and the future Slap Maxwell wouldn’t steer us wrong!

(I can feel you rolling your eyes right now, maybe about to click out, but we’re living in awful times right now. Have some fun. Take a ride with me. Come on!)

Anyway, by the end of the ’80s, the Berlin Wall was coming down, the Soviet Union’s collapse wasn’t far behind, and we could exhale and stop worrying about nuclear war.

For a minute.

(Last night was a Thursday night. Are we all still alive? I’m afraid to look.)

And I have to say this about Sting: He was ahead of his time. Grammarians and armchair pedants lost their minds and made fun of his “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,” but who’s laughing now? Huh? They/them for the win!

OK, here we go

This ordinary (or so we thought) Mets-Braves regular-season game was must-see TV on a Thursday night almost a decade before must-see TV Thursday nights became a thing.

Oh no! Rain! No baseball yet!

 

After waiting out onscreen messages on the big Zenith wood-console television advising viewers that first pitch was on hold, there is finally baseball. Rick Mahler (11-7, 3.19) vs. Dwight Gooden (11-3, 1.65).

I’m all in.

Quick aside: A year later, I’d share an Astrodome elevator with Gooden, Mookie Wilson and other Mets after their unforgettable 16-inning NLCS Game 6 against Houston. On this night, who knew a 19-inning game was coming? But whatever happened, Wilson wouldn’t be involved. He’d had shoulder surgery the day before.

Another aside: Years later, I covered college basketball games the Braves’ Benedict officiated. OK, I’m name-dropping, and getting ahead of myself, going back to the future. Sorry.

Play ball!

Let’s settle in for some baseball on Independence Day 1985.

Gary Carter gives the Mets a 1-0 first-inning lead with a single to score Keith Hernandez, who had doubled (and went on to hit for the cycle). Mahler gets out of a bases-loaded jam to limit the damage.

Claudell Washington leads off the bottom of the first against Gooden with a triple and then ties the score on a Rafael Ramirez groundout. Gooden walks the bases loaded but, like Mahler, gets out of it. The score is 1-1 through one inning.

It’s still tied in the third inning when, after Gooden gives up his second hit, a Bob Horner single, more rain comes.

Aww, another delay? Sorry, but no. I called a friend to see if he was up for a movie.

Show time(s)

This being 1985, I called landline to landline. No Caller ID, so the only way to know who was calling was to pick up. My friend did. I had already checked the movie times.

No internet, so I’d looked in the local paper. There it was, on Page 27. We had just enough time to make it to the last showing of “Back to the Future.” My friend was game.

The poster and the trailer had supplied most of what I knew about the movie. I already liked Fox from “Family Ties.” Let’s do this.

And now, your feature presentation.

Newspaper clippings in the movie’s opening sequence! Was there anything in the paper that I’d just held in my hands worth clipping and saving? Probably not. Certainly not on Page 27. Why would I need to look at the movie ads from July 4, 1985, decades later??

(Heh heh. We saw the 9:40 p.m. feature, I confirmed with a friend’s help, at Prien Lake Cinema in Lake Charles, La. Also showing there: “The Goonies” and “Red Sonja.”)

You might know Lake Charles from The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek”; as where Joe Dumars played college basketball (for McNeese State); from the Lucinda Williams song “Lake Charles”; as the city where Tony Kushner went to high school; or where local resident Rockin’ Sidney recorded “My Toot Toot,” a regional hit in the summer of 1985.

For a frame of reference, the Detroit Pistons drafted Dumars 16 days before this Mets-Braves game.

Shhh, the movie’s started!

We sit where we can. Six minutes in, a song by Huey Lewis and the News? Their last album’s name and cover had come about because of people watching games in bars, so this still was sort of a “Sports” night even though I’d given up on Mets-Braves. (Play was still suspended. I hadn’t missed a pitch yet, but I didn’t know that.)

Wait, now a Huey Lewis cameo? Oh, this is too much. I love it!

Marty McFly’s band’s audition doesn’t go well. Huey breaks the News: “I’m afraid you’re just too darn loud.” Handing Marty back his audition tape, his girlfriend tries to keep his spirits up. Bands made audition tapes on cassettes back then. That’s how we listened to music in 1985, on tape and on vinyl. (What’s that you say, cassettes are making a comeback? Be sure to buy a pencil! You’ll thank me later!)

The “save the clock tower” lady is here for further exposition to set up later scenes. She and her group’s members “think it should be preserved exactly the way it is.”

Preserved exactly the way it is … are we talking about the clock in the town square or about baseball? A lot of people would be happy hitting a restore point to reset the sport to an earlier time. In 1985, baseball could still say it didn’t have a clock. And time seemed to stand still on that July night, what with the never-ending game and the broken clock in Hill Valley running simultaneous time-wrecking timelines.

Buckle up!

The first major plot point comes in a scene at Twin Pines Mall on Oct. 26, 1985.

In the real world, that will be the day of the Don Denkinger play in the World Series. Why couldn’t they have done something about that? In the real world, the AP Top 25 college football poll had Iowa at No. 1 and BYU and Air Force in the top 10. Ohio State, UTEP and BYU soon enough reshuffled the deck to ruin a few dreams. This paragraph is your reminder that Oct. 26, 1985, was a long time ago.

In the movie world, everything changes at 88 mph on that date.

“Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me that you built a time machine … out of a DeLorean?” Great line. Great delivery, and it somehow got better over the years. Just like a certain baseball game.

Now we’re in 1955?

Fast driving, screaming, a scarecrow and more screaming, and now Marty has traveled back in time 30 years, thanks to Doc Brown’s previous tinkering with the time machine’s settings. It’s Nov. 5, 1955, with a good season already in the books for the Milwaukee Braves (85-69). The 1985 Atlanta Braves (66-96) would take it. The Mets don’t exist yet.

“You space bastard! You killed my pine!”

OK, that’s why it’s Lone Pine Mall when Marty gets back.

(Please don’t explain why that’s not possible. Continuity errors, goofs, things that defy the laws of physics? Both the movie and the ballgame had them. I’m not sure we minded.)

Ha! “Give me a Pepsi Free” is a joke that needs no explaining in 1985. As the script intends, it lands wrong as a straight line in 1955. In the 21st century, more than a few first-time viewers probably heard someone say, “OK, here’s why that’s funny.” Pepsi Free went away in 1987.

Aside: Atlanta being a Coke town, no one at the Braves game was getting a Pepsi, free or otherwise, I’m thinking.

Speaking of, they were playing again, as I’d learn. Gooden and Mahler were out. The Braves took a 3-1 lead with Roger McDowell pitching for the Mets. No way to know any of this without using the payphone in the lobby and calling someone who might be watching. No apps. And it was late, after 10 p.m. Central time. I wasn’t interested enough to make that call. Besides, the movie was too engrossing at this point.

Hey, look at Marty making a call from a phone booth! A call to Doc (Brown Emmet L scientist …… Klondike 5-4385). No answer. No way to leave a message. Can you imagine how frustrating? Marty tears the page out of the phone book (yes, we still had those 30 years later, in 1985). Now he’s got Doc’s address, 1640 Riverside Drive.

The movie gets a little pervy after that, even worse in one scene on the night of the school dance, so I think I’m going to skip through much of the rest.

Back-back-back-back-back … to the future

Random thought: That summer, when a baseball player hit a long fly, did anyone call it a McFly? I don’t think I did. Did I?

Let’s fast-forward.

Cal … Calvin Klein. “What’s a rerun?” Harnessing 1.21 gigawatts. “Next Saturday night, we’re sending you back … to the future!”

“There’s that word again, heavy. Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull?” Darth Vader. Planet Vulcan. The Enchantment Under the Sea dance, a “rhythmic ceremonial ritual,” as Doc calls it, is coming up. “That’s Calvin Klein,” Lorraine says. “Oh my God, he’s a dream.”

Do not open until 1985. Earth angel, will you be mine? Johnny B. Goode. Marvin Berry. “Marty, that was very interesting music.” Mr. Fusion. “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

OK, that was fun, if unexpectedly disturbing in places. After the movie, we walked out of the cinema to a mall parking lot. A lone pine? Two pines? No pines? I don’t remember, but the city had a lot of pine trees. An awful stretch of hurricanes later, I hope it still does.

I wanted to get something to eat. Wait, did I have any cash? No credit or debit card, and they weren’t accepting those anyway. Close to midnight, the choices weren’t great. I’d have been fine with a Pepsi Free. My recollection is that I, or we, found something.

There was no reason to rush home. The Mets and Braves had surely finished by now. We didn’t have a VCR, so there was no tape to watch. (We didn’t have a Mr. Fusion, but we had a Mr. Coffee.)

Little did I know that after the Braves scored four runs in the bottom of the eighth to splash their way to an 8-7 lead, the Mets sent the game into extra innings in the top of the ninth on consecutive singles by Howard Johnson, Danny Heep and Lenny Dykstra.

Back-back-back-back-back … to the game

So when I got home, a surprise awaited. The teams, having traded home runs in the 13th inning, were still playing, now tied 10-10 in the 17th inning. That’s when Rick Camp entered the chat. Dykstra drove in HoJo again, this time in the 18th, and the Mets had an 11-10 lead. The end was near.

Or so we thought.

With the Braves down to their last out, Camp came to the plate. That’s right, a pitcher. Mets reliever Tom Gorman called game, right? Oh, but John Sterling, then an announcer for Turner Sports, put it out into the universe.

“If he hits a home run to tie this game, this game will be certified as absolutely the nuttiest in the history of baseball.”

By now you know what happened.

A pitcher!

I should have seen it coming after such a buildup. And, five years earlier, watching Nolan Ryan’s Astros debut on TV, I graced a kid from the neighborhood with my baseball knowledge after he said, “Wouldn’t it be great if he hit a home run?”

Me: Um, he’s a pitcher. They’re the worst hitters! And he just came over from the American League. He hasn’t batted in eight years. He’s not going to hit a home run!

I’m sure you can guess what happened.

And that game lasted 17 innings! With Camp coming up in the 18th inning five years later, I should have known!

(As a copy editor, I have to quibble with the label on the video above. It was Ryan’s Astrodome debut as an Astro, but he pitched in the Dome as a member of the Mets in 1966, 1968, 1970 and 1971. So, that 1980 game was not Ryan’s Astrodome debut.)

Anyway, on what was now July 5, 1985, the Mets had had enough. They scored five runs in the top of the 19th. Here’s Retrosheet to tell you how:

Ron Darling gave up two Atlanta runs in the bottom of the inning but ended the game by striking out, of all people, Camp.

Mets 16, Braves 13. Nineteen innings. Back with the totals after this.

By the numbers

Fox filmed “Family Ties” and “Back to the Future” at the same time. The Braves and Mets got only a taste of the long work days Fox put in making the movie. In their final form, the two types of entertainment that night were wildly different in length.

The movie’s run time is 116 minutes. From start to finish, including rain delays, the baseball telecast lasted 495 minutes.

The movie’s final budget was $19 million. The Braves payroll that year was $14,771,382, behind only the Yankees ($15,398,047). The Mets shelled out $11,013,714.

We should have expected shenanigans on that day. The moon was full. And Major League Baseball has a wild July 4 history. You could look it up. Mets-Braves 1985 is just one part of it.

But that’s baseball, right? If you watch, you’ll see something you’ve never seen before.
Which is why we went to see “Back to the Future.” We got a 2-for-1.

Once the game was over, even though the date was July 5 and it was 3:55 a.m., the Braves’ stadium crew shot off the scheduled Fourth of July postgame fireworks for the fans who endured from the beginning until the end.

A few more thoughts

Times change. Forty years before “Back to the Future” and the Rick Camp Game, it was 1945. That blows my mind, even though I can do basic math.

Working on this story last summer, I had a ballgame on and heard the “Here we go, Dodgers, here we go” piped-in sound at Chavez Ravine. Whoever your favorite team is, that versatile ditty is a comfort, I was reminded.

Some people get excited by the animation that lets them know the trailers are over and the movie is about to begin. They get excited by the studio and production company logos and intros. They know they’re about to see something they’ve never seen before. Or maybe some things they’ve seen before that are a comfort.

Tradition, as I touched on earlier, is that way for many people.

In the movie “Keeping the Faith,” Rabbi Lewis has words with Rabbi Jacob Schram after his surprise unconventional music in a service.

“You have to appreciate the fact that a lot of people come here for a sense of continuity!” Rabbi Lewis says. “Mrs. Katz likes to sing the Ein Keloheinu the way she knows it. Tradition is not old habit. It’s comforting to people!”

I played guitar in church for a decade, so I understand that. Also, as a sportswriter, I heard people yelling during the national anthem a time or two because the rendition wasn’t traditional enough for them.

I had my own tradition watching movies in the ’80s. Fifth-row center. Popcorn, Dr Pepper and chocolate-covered almonds. Stay until the credits end, and maybe a little longer, just in case.

A tension that’s in everything

The tug-of-war between tradition and modernizing is everywhere. Anyone who’s ever complained about the clutter on TV screens during live games has probably watched a replay of a game from decades ago and been frustrated. “What’s the score? What quarter? How much time is left?”

At the movies, as opposed to streaming, there’s no bar showing how far we are into the movie, no timer counting down the minutes remaining. Decades ago, without those, we lost ourselves in the timelessness.

We still have that with baseball. I think we had more of it in 1985, what with no pitch clock and no extra-innings ghost runner.

Fun trivia

Found this one while doing research for this story.

Three days before the Rick Camp Game, Bruce Bochy hit a walk-off home run off Nolan Ryan for a 6-5 San Diego Padres win over the Houston Astros. It was the only walk-off homer Ryan allowed in 807 games. Bochy and Ryan were Astros teammates when Ryan hit that home run in the video above. Baseball is like that.

That’s all, folks

Like the players and fans who stayed till the end, I’m spent. So are you, I’m guessing. I’ve thrown a lot at you.

Thanks for reading this far. I hope you enjoyed it. Over many months, I built a time machine … out of a laptop.

Do I have another story to tell you in June 2026, when we hit the 40th anniversary of another ’80s movie I’ve already referenced in this story?

That’s from nine years ago. You’ll have to stick around for at least 11 months to find out the answer to my question. If I’m able, I’ll stick around as well.

Or as unwell.

And as your reward for making it to the end, let me blow your mind before we go: “Back to the Future” was about a trip back in time 30 years, from 1985 to 1955. If we did the same today, we’d be traveling back to …

… 1995.

You’re welcome.

Stay until the credits end, and maybe a little longer, just in case.

As I said way up high, I know this is long, but working on it kept me alive. That has to count for something, right?

♥

Thank you for reading

If you appreciate what you find here and feel generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you. Here’s a butterfly for you.

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If you appreciate what you find here and are feeling generous, you can check out the Tip Jar! Thank you for reading!

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Credits

Image showing movie poster by Ralf Liebhold via Shutterstock.

Photo of Mets-Braves rain delay from 2011 by Sean Pavone via Shutterstock.

Photo of wet baseball by cctm via Shutterstock.

Image showing time machine’s settings by AlexandraKo via Shutterstock.

Photo of fan waiting out rain delay by Shout It Out Design via Shutterstock.

I misplaced some of my notes and bookmarks from last year amid my ongoing trauma and health issues. In addition to what’s hyperlinked, my research stops included The Athletic (where I work), The Sporting News, the Society for American Baseball Research, Baseball Reference, the Baseball Almanac, New York and Atlanta newspaper stories, online viewing of the game, and conversations with baseball writers and fans. If you spot something you think should be credited or corrected, please let me know. It’s been a rough year.

Further research help by Michael McHale. “I Melt With You” reminder by friend and longtime concertgoer Kristin Dorsett. Thank you both!