,
with the score tied 7-7, A's pitcher Bill Fischer tried to blow a
fastball past Mickey.
Bad idea. Mickey
stepped into it
and, with perfect timing, met the ball with the sweet spot of his
bat, walloping it with everything he had. The sound of the bat colliding with the ball was likened
to a cannon shot. The players on both benches jumped to their feet.
Yogi Berra shouted, "That's it!" The ball rose in a
majestic laser-like drive, rocketing into the night toward the
farthest confines of Yankee Stadium. The question was never whether
it was a home run or not. The question was whether this was going to
be the first ball to be hit out of Yankee Stadium.
That it had the height and distance was obvious. But would it clear
the façade, the decoration on the front side of the roof above the
third deck in right-field? "I usually didn't care how far the
ball went so long as it was a home run. But this
time I thought, 'This ball could go out of Yankee Stadium!'"
Just as the ball was about to leave the park, it struck the façade mere inches from the
top with such ferocity that it bounced all the way back to the infield.
That it won the game was an afterthought. Mickey just missed
making history. It was the closest a ball has ever come to going out
of Yankee Stadium in a regular season game.**
The question then became "How far would the ball have gone had
the façade not prevented it from leaving the park?" Using geometry,
it is possible to calculate the distance with some
accuracy. The principle variable is how high the ball would have
gone. If we assume the ball was at its apex at the point where it
struck the façade, using the Pythagorean Theorem ("In a right
triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the
squares of the other two sides") we can determine the distance
from home plate to the point where the ball struck the façade. Then
we can use calculus to calculate that the distance the ball would
have traveled would have been
636 feet. However, there are a number of undetermined factors: wind
velocity, spin on the ball, the speed of the pitch Mickey hit, and
others. (For a more complete explanation of the calculations and
a complete description of this and other Mantle homers, see Explosion!
by Mark Gallagher. This book is the definitive book on Mantle's homers. Unfortunately, it is out of print.
Check your local library or EBay for a most entertaining book that
is well worth reading for any Mantle fan.)
So how do we get 734 feet? In the example above, we assumed that the
ball was at its apex when it struck the façade. However, observers
were unanimous in their opinion that the ball was still rising when
it hit the façade. How do we determine how high the ball
would have
gone? In fact, we cannot. From this point forward all numbers become
guesses, estimates of how high we think the ball might have gone. A
conservative estimate would be 20 feet. Those 20 feet make a major
difference. They cause our calculation to go up almost 100 feet, to
the 734 foot number listed above. Is 20 feet a fair estimate? Those
present when the ball was hit feel that it would have gone at least
that much higher, and many feel that the 20 foot number is far too
low. It is all just a guess.
This is a good example of what can happen with estimates, especially
computer estimates that determine the length of home runs now. Most
of the home run distance numbers used today are the result of
computer estimates of how far the ball would have traveled without
obstruction. (One of these programs gave the 734 foot number
listed.) Whether or not this is a fair number is a matter of
opinion. However, if the distance of this home run is disputed, then
the distance of many of the home runs hit by today's players must be
questioned. While the software used for home run distances has
greatly improved, there remain questions as to its accuracy. It is
important to note that many of Mickey's home runs were measured to
the point they actually landed, leaving no question about the
accuracy of the distance reported. (Click
Here for an explanation of how the distance of Mickey's
record-setting blast was calculated.)
*
The façade was the decorative facing along the roof of the old
Yankee Stadium. Mickey hit the façade in regular-season games at least three
times during his career: May 5, 1956 off Moe Burtschy, May 20, 1956 off
Pedro Ramos, and May 22, 1963 off Bill Fischer.
**
Legend has it that Mickey hit balls completely out of
Yankee Stadium up
to three times during batting practices. Supposedly Mickey
did it twice left-handed and once right-handed. Witnesses of these
incredible feats include fans, stadium vendors, teammates and
opposing players.
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(2)
656
feet (3/26/51, Bovard Field,
USC – Exhibition Game. Pitcher: Tom Lovrich – Hit Left-handed)
Mickey
was having a fantastic spring training. In 1951 the Yankees trained
in Arizona instead of Fort Lauderdale. The
dry desert air and higher altitude are conducive to the longball,
and Mickey made the most of it. "The first time that I really knew I could play in the big
leagues was when I found that I could hit major league pitching that
spring.
"I was just happy to be with the club that year. I
thought I was going to play Triple A ball with Kansas City. I was in Double
A the year before and no one had ever gone directly to the Yankees
from Double A.
"I hit a lot of long home runs that spring. After our spring
training schedule in Arizona we played some exhibition games on the
west coast. At Seals Stadium in San Francisco I hit a ball where
they say only DiMaggio had hit one before. And of course there was
the home run at USC."
Bovard Field at the University of Southern California is a small
baseball diamond with a football field adjacent to right-field and
right-center-field. A street runs outside and parallel to the left-field wall,
with a
number of houses in the neighborhood across from the park. On March 26, 1951 the Yankees
played an exhibition game with the USC baseball team.
During the game
Mickey belted two spectacular blasts, one from each side of the
plate. They were two of the longest home runs ever seen.
Before Mickey played a single major league game he'd become a
legend.
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(3)
650 feet (6/11/53,
Briggs Stadium,
Detroit – Pitcher: Art Houteman, Detroit Tigers –
Hit Left-handed)
Mickey had a
15-game hitting streak, and the Yankees a 13-game winning streak,
going into this game at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. In the
seventh inning, The Mick came to the plate with a man on
base. Facing right-handed pitcher Art Houteman,
Mickey belted a tremendous drive that ricocheted off the right-field
roof. (Some witnesses say it hit the same light tower as Reggie
Jackson's prodigious drive in the 1971 All-Star game.)
Only Ted Williams had ever hit one over the roof in Detroit.
Mickey's roof clearing blasts would come later in his career. This
blast was yet another tape measure shot, continuing what Mickey
started in April that year. Using geometric calculations, it would
have ended up across Trumbull Avenue, approximately 650 feet from
the plate.
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(4)
643
feet (9/10/60, Tiger Stadium,
Detroit – Pitcher: Paul Foytack, Detroit Tigers – Hit
Left-handed)
Detroit's
Tiger Stadium (the name was changed from Briggs Stadium) was a
favorite Mantle hunting ground for legendary home run blasts. On
September 10, 1960, with two
out and two on in the seventh, Mickey worked the count to 2-0. Righty
Paul Foytack fired a fastball right into the Mick's killing zone and
he jumped on it. He
crushed a spectacular drive that easily cleared the
right-field roof (something Mickey had done several times by this
point in his career), crossed Trumbull Avenue and landed at the base
of a shed in the Brooks lumberyard across from the ballpark.
For spectators that day it was another of many tape measure homers
Mantle hit during his career. For the Yankees the win - coupled with
a Baltimore Orioles loss - put them back in first place in a tight
pennant race. This overshadowed the magnitude of Mickey's blast in
the stories that appeared in newspapers the next day. That plus the
fact that spectacular Mantle home runs were becoming somewhat
commonplace. So much so that Yankees' PR director Bob Fishel (Red
Patterson's successor), who had many other duties, couldn't keep up
with every tape measure blast Mantle hit. For that matter, Fishel
wasn't with the Yankees in Detroit on that trip, so there was no one
to emphasize to the press what Mickey had accomplished, and the
Tigers certainly had no motivation to point it out.
But this one turns into quite a story
a quarter of a century later. As told by Mark Gallagher in his
excellent book, Explosion!, Dr. Paul Susman, a
true Mantle fan, was convinced that this home run was special. As
part of Dr. Susman's research for Gallagher's book, he went to
Detroit to see if he could get the necessary information to
calculate the exact distance the ball traveled.
It turns out that the story of Mickey's historic drive was well
known at Brooks Lumber. Paul Borders, a Brooks employee, saw exactly
where the ball landed. Susman and fellow researcher Robert Schiewe calculated the
distance through Schiewe's use of the Pythagorean Theorem. The
result was a prodigious 643 feet. This is the longest home run to have actually
been measured from the point it was hit to the point at which it
landed. Although it was measured after the fact, the point of impact
was well-known and we believe this distance to be completely
reliable. This is no computer estimate. This is the distance the
ball traveled in the air from home plate to the place where it
landed. The Guinness Book of Sports Records notes it as the longest
home run in a major league game to be measured "after the
fact." It is the longest home run ever hit in a major league
game where it was possible to get the exact measurement. Considered
along with the Bovard Field homer, it demonstrates that Mickey's
unheard of home run distances are no flukes.
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(5)
630
feet (9/12/53, Yankee Stadium –
Pitcher: Billy Hoeft, Detroit Tigers –
Hit Right-handed)
Going into the
bottom of the seventh inning of this game the Yankees had a slim one-run lead
over the Tigers, 4-3. Mickey stepped in to face lefty Billy Hoeft. With two
men on and a 3-2 count,
Mickey blasted a searing line drive that scorched through the air
into the upper deck in left-field. There it smashed a seat and
bounced back down
onto the playing field. It was Mickey's second long homer of the game.
The first was a titanic cloud-duster to left-center that measured
420 feet, although it easily traveled half-again that distance if
its actual arc were measured. In the accompanying photo the Polo
Grounds, home of the NY Giants, can be seen at the top as indicated by the small
red arrow.
1953 was the year of the tape measure home run. Beginning April 17th
in Washington, Mickey went on a tear of longball hitting the likes
of which had never been seen. Long distance homers became a great
topic of conversation. Earlier during the game Yankees Hall of Fame
catcher Bill Dickey was saying that Babe Ruth and Jimmy Foxx had
both hit balls farther than the Mick. After Mantle's seventh inning
blast Dickey said, "Forget what I just said. I've never seen a ball hit that
hard!"
Mickey's blast traveled 425 feet to the seat it broke 80 feet
above the field. Once again, geometric calculations give us the 630
foot figure for the length of Mickey's blast if unimpeded. About
this homer Casey Stengel said, "See that last exit in the upper
deck in left field? Look. Way up there almost over the bullpen. They
say that nobody ever hit one outta the Yankee Stadium. But if the
stands didn't get in the way Mantle's would have gone over the wall
because it was still climbin' when it smacked the seats."
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(6)
620
feet (5/30/56,
Yankee Stadium Façade
– Pitcher: Pedro Ramos, Washington Senators –
Hit Left-handed)
Mickey
loved Washington pitching. He hit many long home runs off the
Senators' Pedro Ramos and Camilo Pascual. In
the twin bill played on May 30, 1956 Mickey faced both Pascual and Ramos, and he
pounded a
long shot off each of them.
Mickey was on
another longball tear, having bounced a ball off the right-field façade
on May 5th off Kansas City's Moe Burtschy. (No estimate
has been made of the distance of that Mantle homer, which may well
end up in the top ten if ever calculated.) It was the year Mickey
won baseball's Triple Crown, challenging Babe Ruth's home run record
in the process. He ended up with 52, one of the few players to hit
over 50 homers in a season.
"Pedro
and I were friends. He used to challenge me to a foot race before
games. In one game one of our pitchers, I don't remember who,
knocked down one of the Washington players – you could tell it was
a knockdown – and Ramos had to knock down one of our players to
protect his guys.
"I
was leading off the next inning and I didn't even think about the
knockdown. Everybody on our bench and everybody on their bench and
even some of the fans knew I was gonna get a knockdown, but I didn't
even think about it.
"Sure
enough, Pedro hit me with his first pitch. It didn't make me mad –
he didn't try to hit me in the head or anything, you know, just in
the butt – but after the game he came up to me and said, 'Meekie,
I'm sorry I have to do that.' I said, 'That's okay. But the next
time you do it I'm gonna drag a bunt toward first base and run right
up your back.' He said, 'You would really do that?'
"The
funny thing about it was that the next time up was the time I almost
hit one out of Yankee Stadium. It hit the façade. After the game he
came up to me and said, 'I'd rather have you run up my back than to
hit one over the roof!'"
The
first game Mickey faced Ramos
after Mickey was hit by Pedro's pitch was the first game
of the doubleheader.
With the Yankees behind 1-0
Mickey laid into a Ramos fastball and got it all. The ball took
off in a high drive toward right-field that looked like it might have
a chance to become the first ball to go completely out of Yankee
Stadium. It soared above the stadium roof but a stiff breeze cut at it and
brought it down against the right-field façade, about
18 inches from clearing the roof.
It was an amazing feat, the likes of which had not been seen before.
It became a Yankee Stadium legend until eclipsed by Mickey's later
efforts. Spectators and rival players pointed to the spot the ball
hit for weeks afterward. Their reaction is summed up by Harvey Kuenn
of the Tigers: "Did he really hit it up there? Really?"
In the second game Pascual was pitching. Mickey came to the plate in
the fifth with the score tied at 3-3 and a man on base. Mickey
launched another left-handed homer, this one into the right-field
bleachers, a 450-foot blast. The Yankees swept the doubleheader,
much in thanks to Mickey and his prodigious home runs.
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(7)
565
feet (4/17/53, Griffith
Stadium, Washington – Pitcher: Chuck Stobbs, Washington Senators –
Hit
Right-handed)
This
ranks as one of, if not the, most famous home run in history. It's
the home run that coined the term "tape measure home run"
and is listed in the Guinness Book of Sports Records as the
longest home run to be hit in a regular-season major league game.
The Yankees were playing the Senators at
Griffith Stadium in
Washington, DC. Griffith Stadium was a little bandbox of a ballpark
but, as Mickey said, "It wasn't that easy to hit a home run
there. There was a 90-foot wall in center-field, and there always
seemed to be a breeze blowing in."
Lefty Chuck Stobbs was on the mound. A light wind was
blowing out
from home plate for
a change. It was two years to the day
since
Mickey's first major league game. Mickey stepped up to the plate. Stobbs
fired a
fastball just below the letters, right where the Mick liked them,
and he connected full-on with it. The ball took off toward the 391-foot
sign in left-center-field. It soared past the fence, over the
bleachers and was headed out of the park when it
ricocheted off a beer sign on the auxiliary football scoreboard.
Although slightly impeded, it continued its flight over neighboring Fifth
Street and landed in the backyard of 434 Oakdale Street, several
houses up the block.
Billy Martin was on third when Mickey connected and, as a joke, he
pretended to tag up like it was just a long fly ball. Mickey didn't
notice Billy's shenanigans ("I used to keep my
head down as I
rounded the bases after a home run. I didn't want to show up the
pitcher. I figured he felt bad enough already.") and almost ran
into Billy! If not for third base coach Frank Crosetti he would
have. Had Mickey touched Billy he would have
automatically been
declared out and would have been credited only with a double.
Meanwhile up in the press box Yankees PR director Red Patterson
cried out, "That one's got to be measured!" He raced out of the
park and around to the far side of the park where he found
10-year-old Donald Dunaway with the ball. Dunaway showed Red the
ball's impact in the yard and Red paced off the distance to the
outside wall of Griffith Stadium. Contrary to popular myth, he did
not use a tape measure, although he and Mickey were photographed
together with a giant tape measure shortly after the historic blast.
Using the dimensions of the park, its walls and the distance he
paced off, Patterson calculated the ball traveled 565 feet. However,
sportswriter Joe Trimble, when adding together the distances, failed
to account for the three foot width of the wall and came up with the
562-foot figure often cited. However, 565 feet is the correct
number.
This was the first ball to ever go over Griffith Stadium's
left-field
bleachers. Most believe
the ball would have gone even further had it
not hit the scoreboard. At any rate, it became one of the most
famous
home runs ever. It was headline news in a number of
newspapers and a major story across the country. From that date
forward long home runs were referred to as "tape measure"
home runs. That this home run is ranked as #7 on Mickey's top ten
says an awful lot about Mickey's incredible power. For most players
it would have been a once-in-a-lifetime shot if they were lucky
enough to even come close to this distance.
(Note:
The photo of Mickey batting left-handed with the ball glancing off
the scoreboard is for illustration only. Mickey hit the 565-foot
Griffith Stadium home run batting right-handed.)
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(8)
550
feet (6/5/55,
Comiskey Park,
Chicago – Pitcher: Billy Pierce, Chicago White Sox –
Hit Right-handed)
On June
5, 1955, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, the Yankees battled the White
Sox. In
the
fourth inning of the second game of a doubleheader, Mickey stepped
in against lefty Billy Pierce. Pierce tried to slip a fastball past
Mickey and the Mick tore into it, sending a scorching high drive to left.
The ball cleared the 360-foot mark, crossed the 160-foot roof and
descended to smash a car windshield on 34th Street outside. A parking lot
attendant recovered the ball.
Some papers reported that Mickey's drive landed on the roof or hit a
light tower but didn't go out of the park. But the Comiskey Park attendants
on the roof went
to the Yankees locker room after the game to tell Mickey that his homer had cleared
the roof and gone completely out of the park.
Only Jimmy Foxx had ever hit a ball that far. However, Mickey's homer is the
only one to have eyewitnesses to verify that it actually cleared the
stadium.
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(9)
535
feet (7/6/53,
Connie Mack
Stadium,
Philadelphia – Pitcher: Frank Fanovich, Philadelphia Athletics –
Hit
Right-handed)
The Yankees were playing
a twi-night doubleheader at the re-named Shibe Park in Philadelphia
against the Philadelphia Athletics. In the first game when the
Yankees came to bat in the top of the sixth the score was 5-4 in
their favor. Frank Fanovich,
pitching in relief for the A's, walks
Billy Martin, Phil Rizzuto and Yanks pitcher Johnny Sain with one
out. Irv Noren, playing center-field for an ailing Mickey Mantle, was
due up. Casey Stengel, famous for playing the percentages, sent the
Mick in to pinch-hit right-handed against the lefty. Fanovich, with
the bases loaded behind him, fired a thigh-high fastball right down
the middle. Mickey clobbered it, sending it high over the roof of
the second deck in left-center-field. The ball cleared the roof by a
good 25 feet, went over Somerset Street outside, and was never seen
again. It was one of the longest home runs in Philadelphia history.
It was Mickey's third career grand slam, and a fabulous one at that.
It helped turn around a Yankees losing streak (they had lost 11 out
of 15 going into the doubleheader) and they went on to win the
nightcap. Once again the Mick hit a ball where only Jimmy Foxx had
hit one before.
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(10)
530
feet (4/28/53,
Busch Stadium,
St. Louis – Pitcher: Bob Cain, St. Louis Browns –
Hit
Right-handed)
Eleven
days after Mickey's historic blast at Griffith Stadium he blasted
another tape measure home run in St. Louis against the St. Louis
Browns at the newly renamed Busch Stadium, formerly Sportsman's
Park. This home run is overlooked because it came so soon after
Mickey's 565-footer at Griffith Stadium in Washington. But those
present in St. Louis April 28, 1953 acknowledge it as perhaps the
longest ball ever hit at the old St. Louis ballpark.
It was a wild game in which the Yankees lost a 5-0 lead, there was a bench
clearing brawl with actual punches thrown, and the game was stopped due to
spectators throwing bottles at the
Yankees outfielders. With two out and two on in the third, Mickey,
batting right-handed, golfed a low pitch that sailed over the
left-field wall. It cleared the street, smashed against a house's
second floor porch and bounced into a yard on Sullivan Avenue.
Red Patterson,
the same PR director who measured Mickey's epic Griffith Stadium
shot 11 days earlier, also paced off this homer. However, he
measured it only from the base of the house the ball struck. That
distance is 494 feet, but the ball hit the porch at least 15 feet
above the ground. This drive would easily have gone the 530 feet
cited if not impeded by the house porch.
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Of Mickey's top ten home runs, six were hit left-handed and four
right-handed,
an amazing display of power from both sides of the plate. Mickey had a versatility never before seen, and it hasn't been seen since.
Without question he was the greatest switch-hitter of all time. Perhaps in the future the distance of other Mantle homers, such as
his mammoth blast at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, will be calculated.Bar Graph of
Mickey Mantle's 10 Longest Home Runs
(Click on any bar to go to
the story behind that home run)
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If you know of any Mantle homer we overlooked,
or a homer where the distance has been calculated, please click
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we will add it to our list.
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