Longest Home Run

[glasspoet]

Here is my favorite story to tell. I've told it several times before, so skip it if you've heard it before.

You've seen some long shots in your day, right? Maybe McGwire's shot in the Home Run Derby? Sosa, Fielder, Reggie's All Star game homerun, maybe Kingman's homerun bouncing down Waveland avenue?

There are stories of a homerun hit by Luis Santop in the early years of the Negro Leagues that supposedly was measured at 600 feet. I've always been taught that the longest official homerun by MLB is a homerun by Mickey Mantle at 565 feet!

To my surprise, one night very late, MLB showed a somewhat grainy video of THAT homerun! In the video, taken from what appears to be the top-back of the upper right field bleachers, shows a large multi-storied building--taking up a city block from the intersection outside the view--and an equally large parking lot beside the building. There are many cars parked in the parking lot, and a couple are strolling hand in hand across the parking lot. All of a sudden a baseball appears and lands well in the back of the parking lot, bounces OVER the height of the building, and disappears from sight! My initial reaction upon seeing that was "thank God that didn't hit anybody!"

Since that time, it has come to my attention that that homerun is NOT MLBs longest recorded homerun. The actual longest recorded homerun was hit by (you guessed it) Mickey Mantle at 630 feet!! Holy Cow!

So how long is that really? If you want to experience how long a shot that really is, here's what you do----go stand on the exact spot of the longest homerun you've ever seen hit, whether that be McGwire, Sosa, Hamilton, Upton, Stargell, whoever. From that spot, run (with everything you got, like you haven't run since you were a teenager) as directly AWAY from home plate as you are able to----and if you are as old and out of shape as me, when you finally fall down, panting so hard you think you are dying, or wish you were dying----then you are approximately about as far away from home plate as the ball Mantle hit!!!

[glasspoet]

Here's another one of my favorite Mantle stories. Since I've told it before, you may have already read this one before also -- if so, skip it too.

It was Mantle's Final Year, he had already announced his impending retirement. He played rarely that year, pinch hitting only. Of course, by then, I KNEW his knees were both Total Wrecks and he was a Flaming Alcoholic. Still, I had heard the stories of his pinch hitting so inebriated he could barely see and hitting homeruns -- but he was such a Hero to me, I would watch games just to see him do it on an outside chance.

The Yankees were terrible back then, and baseball was not shown on TV much because of it, still there was often a Saturday game and the Yankees were often the team shown, despite how bad they were -- mostly because of Mantle's pinch-hitting I'm sure. I got lucky and the Yankees were being shown and very late Mantle was put into the game as a pinch hitter. I was rapt.

Much to my shock he laid down a perfect bunt to the second baseman. It looked like a good bunt too -- except the pitcher cut if off at a hard angle, stretching out with his glove, and glove-flipping a nice toss to the first baseman, who caught it with a Nice Stretch. It was a superb play by the pitcher, which was good because the second baseman was playing deep in respect of Mantle's power. Strangely it was a close play because Mantle crossed the bag just as the first baseman received the ball. The umpire called him Safe, which made me feel sad, because it seemed impossible and I'm not in favor of preferential treatment to ANYBODY. They did have Replay even back then and they showed as many angles as they could.

Finally they got an angle that CLEARLY showed he was SAFE!!

It was the last time I was ever to see my Hero play.