World's longest baseball game attempt heads into homestretch

Participants attempting to play the world's longest baseball game are hoping for a home run Sunday.

The four-day effort has seen 56 players take shifts for what they hope will be 82 to 83 hours of continuous baseball at a diamond in Sherwood Park.

The game is the latest marathon effort by a group that has raised nearly $5 million for cancer research since 2003.

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Darcy Hodge, one of the players who signed up to hit the diamond in four- to six-hour shifts, joked on the first day of the game that he expected to be feeling the fatigue by the time they made it to Sunday.

But he has personal experiences with cancer that help him power around third base.

"It's something that hits really close to home," said Hodge, who lost his father to cancer. He has other family members who have battled the disease, including his wife, who is a breast cancer survivor. 

"Hopefully it can alleviate a lot of families' future problems, so they don't have to go through what I did with my father," he said. 

Other plays in the dugout have also been affected by cancer, motivating them to raise money for the University of Alberta's Cross Cancer Institute.

"My wife died of cancer and my father died of cancer and countless aunts and uncles," organizer Brent Saik said. "Unfortunately, it's pretty ingrained in my family and I'm just trying to do something to help fix this thing."

Since 2003, the group has raised about $5 million for the cause by hosting marathon baseball and hockey games.

If all goes as planned, the final pitch will be thrown Sunday evening.