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I was surfing the Internet one day and I came across a site that offered a view of Mickey Mantle's ten longest home runs.
Imagine my surprise when the longest was listed at 734 feet!
As it turns out, this was that famous homer that Mantle nearly hit completely out of Yankee Stadum. It came on May 22, 1963, and the pitcher was Bill Fischer of the Kansas City Athletics.
Here's a photo of the home run as it happened:
Mantle belts a homer on May 22, 1963, against the Kansas City A's at Yankee Stadium.
No one had ever hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium. Not Babe Ruth, or Lou Gehrig, or Jimmie Foxx, or anybody else. However, Mantle's hit left his bat so fast that the Yankee players immediately jumped up from the bench to see it. "This is it!" yelled Yogi Berra, who was sure that, after 17 years as a Yankee, he'd finally see a home run go out of the stadium.
It didn't. The ball struck the facade, just a few feet from the top of the grandstand, and ricocheted almost all the way back to the infield.
As an aside here, I visited Yankee Stadium for the first time a few weeks ago. My wife and I sat in the right field upper deck, and I saw where the ball must have hit the facade. He must have really crushed the ball to make it go that far.
Most observers said that Mantle's homer was the hardest hit they'd ever seen. The question is, how far would the ball have traveled if the facade hadn't gotten in the way? Also, how on earth did this web author arrive at the figure of 734 feet?
The writer said that he used "the Pythagorean theorem" to account for a length of 636 feet, but I'm trying to figure out how. My guess is that the fence was about 318 feet away, and they merely doubled the distance. However, as I pointed out a few years ago, a batted ball loses most of its momentum as it approaches the top of its flight, and it will drop almost straight down after that.
So, where did 636 feet become 734 feet? They claim that the ball was still rising as it hit the facade, and they tacked on an extra 20 feet to the 370 feet distance of the facade from home plate. By "the Pythagorean theorem" this somehow comes out to 734 feet.
Now I know that Mickey Mantle's fans really, really loved the guy. I saw Bob Costas on TV, and Costas explained how he carries a Mantle baseball card in his wallet even today, as an adult. Many people consider Mantle to be the Superman of baseball. Nevertheless, the idea that Mantle could belt a baseball 734 feet strains all credulity. If Mark McGwire's longest homer traveled 545 feet, Mickey didn't hit one almost 200 feet farther, unless they slipped a painted Superball in with the umpire's supply between innings that day.
This is what I'm trying to accomplish with my writing. Baseball, and sports in general, are full of mythmaking. It's not really a bad thing, in its place, but some overenthusiastic writers turn people like Mickey Mantle into folklore figures, like Paul Bunyan. I half expected to read about Mickey's pet, Babe the Blue Ox, lumbering out of the dugout.
Baseball players are human beings, and I find that people like Mantle and Shoeless Joe Jackson are highly interesting without all the mythological trappings added to their legends. The real story of Mantle's homer that day in 1963 is interesting enough without the ridiculous embellishment.
500 feet? Maybe. 550 feet? Perhaps. 734 feet? Absolutely no way.
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