It's the baseball game that never ends -- on purpose and for charity

Picture this: It's 3 a.m. and the world is asleep, save for night owls, insomniacs and the trucks downshifting on the highway. Everything is quiet and still.

Everything, that is, except for a small baseball field in Kansas City, where 60 men and women will be playing non-stop, night and day this weekend to raise over $300,000 for charity.

The idea came to Scott Reinardy, a true baseball diehard (he makes his own baseball bats) and professor at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas, during a local baseball tournament he played at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum last summer.

"We had a morning game and an afternoon game, and then that night I had a league game, too," Reinardy told MLB.com over Zoom recently. "So, I'm leaving the ballpark at 11 o'clock that night and I've been at ballparks since 8 a.m. I just had this thought: What was the longest game?"

He knew the longest professional game was the 33-inning marathon contest between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox in 1981. While that one set the record for longest pro game, the actual time on field was a relatively pedestrian eight hours and 25 minutes. So, he looked to the Guinness Book of Records and found the answer: An 83-hour and 13 minute game set in Canada by Dr. Brent Saik and 55 other players.

That's the mark on which he set his sights and the number that he wants to top: Reinardy and the Endless Game are aiming for 100 hours, going from Thursday, Aug. 31 at 8 a.m. until Monday, Sept. 4, at noon.

"Setting the record is one thing, that's fine, but the money that we're able to raise for the charities that we've designated can be so beneficial to so many," Reinardy said. "We're not going to change the world but it'll help make a difference. And if we can take something we really enjoy and do good for others, why not give it a try?"

Once the idea was firmly lodged in his brain, the next step was figuring out how to actually play the marathon contest. For that, Reinardy reached out to Jerry Weaver, a longtime veteran of Kansas City's Men's Senior Baseball League and the founder of Backyard Baseball, a league for senior citizens who may have aged out of the other adult leagues and anyone wanting to get back into playing baseball.

Weaver is in his early 70s and still plays in three leagues to this day. Baseball is his life, making him the perfect person to help out on this project.

"His mission in life is to get everybody playing baseball. Every youth, every woman, every man -- everyone should play baseball," Reinardy said. "So, I knew if I mentioned it to him, it would catch fire."

When Weaver first heard the pitch, though, he shockingly said no. Looking at the logistics and work of getting the game together -- much less the actual playing of four straight days of baseball -- was seemingly too large. But two weeks later, Weaver came back to Reinardy and said he hadn't been able to get the idea out of his head. The game was on.

It turns out, there is a lot to consider when playing a record-setting baseball game across four straight days. While a normal pickup game just needs a field and a few dozen ballplayers, this one is a little more complex.

According to Guinness World Records regulations, each team can have 30 players. But because this isn't a pickup game, the 60 players who show up on day one make up the full group of players. There won't be a string of new ballplayers showing up, glove in hand, ready to take the field.

"Out of the 60 I needed, the first 58 I talked to, only one person said they couldn't do it," Weaver said. "That's just the way it was because of the charities and having a 501c3 [charitable designation] where they knew that nobody was on salary. Everything is going right back to the charities."

While unlimited substitutions from that 30-player squad are allowed, the players themselves can't leave the field of play. That means no trips to the parking lot for food, no stops at home for a change of clothing or grabbing a quick nap.

Weaver then reached out to RV companies that have donated campers that will be lined up around the field, giving players not currently in the lineup a place to grab a few hours of shuteye. Friends, family and other members of the community will make food runs and laundry drop-offs when necessary. It won't be comfortable living, but at least this group of mostly middle aged-and-up ballplayers won't have to stay awake for four consecutive days and eat only energy bars the entire time.

"We'll need ice, we'll need water," Reinardy said. "There's always one more thing that you go, 'OK, do we have this?' We're talking about laundry; do we have somebody running to do laundry for us or are we just going to smell really bad after four days, which certainly could happen. I mean, you take that old guy smell and times that by sixty, it's gonna get a little nasty. I can guarantee it's not going to be a pleasant dugout by day four."

Each team manager has also split their team into three squads of 10 players each. Rather than setting an innings marker for the teams, they've broken the day into four-hour shifts. For instance, the team on the field from noon to 4 p.m. on Thursday morning will be back out there from midnight to 4 a.m. It's led to some interesting managerial decisions.

"The blessing and curse shift as I have now designated it, will probably be more of the younger guys. I mean, they stay up late anyway and they can handle the heat," Reinardy said with a laugh.

For another, each 10-person squad needs enough pitchers and catchers to get through the games.

"I'm really concerned about it because when you look at a roster of 30 people, you're like, 'OK, we can make this work,'" Henry Cassmeyer, the manager for Team Courage, said. "Out of those 30 people, seven of them can pitch and I've got some who can catch and I've got eight that can do both. I'm one of those -- I'm a utility player. I'll play anywhere you put me on the diamond. I'll pitch, I'll catch, whatever the case may be. Then you start splitting that three ways and it gets a little concerning."

In other words, don't expect a lot of blazing fastballs or killer breaking balls, either: Each pitcher will need to be ready to get back on the mound in just a few hours and throw again. This game is all about beating the clock, not the opposition.

"We're going to have to fight through the exhaustion, we're going to have to fight through the aches and we're going to have to fight through just the psychological barriers of running out there for one more inning," Reinardy said.

And then there's the charity aspect, too. While each of the charities they've selected -- Operation Breakthrough, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Gift of Life, Veterans Community Project, C You in the Major Leagues, North Kansas City Parks and Recreation and the North Kansas City Animal Shelter -- have a special place in the community, there are two that have a more personal connection to Reinardy and Weaver.

One of them is Gift of Life, which supports organ, eye and tissue donation. Reinardy required a heart transplant in 2015 after suffering from giant cell myocarditis, one of only 12 cases of the disease over the previous five years.

The other is Children's Mercy Hospital, where Weaver's son stayed as a child when he required two liver transplants. That makes for some easy motivation for the players to push themselves when they may feel like giving up.

"I'll think of my son," Weaver said. "I'll think of when I was able to play in a father-son tournament. I was pitching and I looked over to first base, and I was going to pick off one of the guys, or tried to. If there hadn't been someone willing to be a donor, that moment never would have happened."

Though anything might happen this weekend, Reinardy assures me that they will be playing through Monday. If players get hurt, another one will step on the field in their place. If rain falls, they'll keep going. Really, the game will only stop if there's lightning or a safety issue. But record or not, the real goal is charity.

"All I know is that at 8 a.m. on Thursday, we're going to be playing baseball and we're gonna play as long as we can," Reinardy said. "If all the other stuff comes together, that's fantastic. But I'd really like to hit that $300,000 goal to give to our charities."

For more information or if you would like to donate, please visit endlessgame.org.