Longest Home Run Ever Hit

Longest Home Run Ever Hit

(Revised)

I don't know if the guy who wrote this article ever actually answered his own question, but he does debunk some of the past claims made by P.R. flacks. It is almost physically impossible to hit a baseball 500 feet without a tailwind. Giancarlo Stanton, for example, has never hit a 500-foot homer, with or without a tailwind. Home Run Tracker has measured every blast in the major leagues in the past ten seasons, and only one exceeded 500 feet, a 504-footer smashed by Adam Dunn in 2008. That one is completely legit. According to Home Run Tracker it gained only 2 feet from wind/temperature/altitude conditions.

What about the great Mickey Mantle? To be honest, it's not likely Mantle consistently hit the ball farther than Stanton or Dunn. Mickey was 5'11", 195. Stanton is 6'6", 240, Dunn is 6'6", 285. The combination of extra size and longer arms would give the modern players a tremendous advantage. Many of Mickey's tape measure shots have been exaggerated. According to Home Run Tracker, Mantle's famous facade shot at Yankee Stadium would have traveled 503 feet if unobstructed. That seems like a legitimate estimate, and that shot was not wind-aided. There was a 13-mph wind that day, but it was blowing out to left, and Mantle homered to right. Mickey himself said that was the hardest he ever hit the ball, so all evidence indicates that Mantle's maximum was 503 in neutral weather conditions at sea level.

The physicists are in agreement with those two numbers. According to this Excel spreadsheet devised by a theoretical physicist to accommodate all possible variations in atmosphere, temperature, elevation and wind, a batted ball with a velocity of 120 MPH leaving the bat can travel no farther than 502 feet in standard conditions (sea level, no wind, 75 degree temperature, 50 percent relative humidity, 29.92 barometer). It is theoretically possible to achieve a higher exit velocity, but it only happens about twice per decade. The highest I've ever seen with a wooden bat is 122, a speed which would raise the theoretical maximum to 512 feet.

Home Run Tracker has debunked many of the distances in baseball lore:

Canseco's alleged 540-footer has been debunked by science, as well as by Canseco himself. (Actually only 443 feet)

Glenallen Hill's monumental blast into the rooftop of the apartment building across from Wrigley, which is the most impressive one I've ever seen - and seemed to be a moon shot, would have traveled only 500 feet if unobstructed - and that was aided by a 18mph wind.

Four homers have been scientifically estimated to have measured at about 530 feet if they had landed on the ground at the same altitude from where they were hit, but all four were aided by strong tailwinds.

• Dave Kingman hit one out of Wrigley in 1976 with a 16 MPH tailwind, and the exact landing spot is known. It was about 530 feet away from home plate.
• Ted Williams' famous "red seat homer" landed on a spot 502 feet from home plate, but Home Run Tracker calls it a 530 footer, because it would have picked up another 28 feet if it could have landed at the same altitude from which it was launched. The wind speed that day was reported to be 18-24 MPH.
• It is estimated that Reggie Jackson's homer in the 1971 All-Star game would have traveled 539 feet if unobstructed. The wind velocity was 17-31 MPH.
• Mantle's alleged 565-foot homer out of Griffith Stadium is measured by the distance to where a kid picked it up, not to the point where it landed, which is not known. Mantle himself has noted that he had a powerful tailwind. He said "about 50MPH" in the linked video, but Sam Diaz, a local meteorologist in the D.C. area reported: “Between 3 and 4 pm, there were gusts up to 41 miles per hour in the direction of the bleachers at Griffith Stadium . . . the lightest gusts were at 20.” One team of a physicist and an author concluded that it did travel a legit 535 feet because of the wind. Take away the wind and the exaggeration, and it was probably the equivalent of a 460-foot homer.

Going through the list of monumental blasts on site after site, then reading what the physicists had to say, the only two homers which produce universal agreement on whether they would have traveled 500 feet unaided by weather conditions were the famous Mantle facade shot and the 2008 Dunn homer.