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They represent a fraction of those who have applied their ability to the act of hitting a baseball. Fewer than one in a million men are capable of powering a ball 450 feet against major league caliber pitching. It is for that reason that we find their actions so thrilling, and will always want to identify them for special reward and distinction. The next truly great slugger in the chronology of long-distance hitting was Ted Williams, who arrived on the major league scene in 1939.
One big advantage of being a slugger for the Colorado Rockies are the friendly confines — and thin air — of Coors Field. However, the longest home run in Rockies history came in a road game against the Florida Marlins in May, 1997. This particular homer came courtesy of “The Big Cat” Andres Galarraga, who absolutely smoked an inside pitch from Marlins’ ace Kevin Brown into the top deck of the old Pro Players Stadium. Brown wasn’t known for giving up a lot of home runs, but the Cat sure lit him up. The ball that Babe Ruth hit to make this home run was given to evangelist Billy Sunday, who was nearby at the Florida Fairgrounds.
How Many Mlb Players Have Hit 3 Homers In A Game?
Dave Kingman was an accomplished home run hitter in his career, retiring in 1986 with 442. None of them would be longer than the one he hit on April 14, 1976 at Wrigley Park. This one wasn’t just hit out of the field of play, it went out of the actual park. MLB.com's Ben Weinrib described Stanton's homer as the longest homer since MLB installed Statcast in all stadiums in 2015. Before 2006, there are several questionable estimations of homers.
People even used tape to measure the distance of previous homers. As Sports Illustrated's Cliff Corcorannoted, Jenkinson also acknowledged The Bambino as owner of the three longest home runs ever hit in his book The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs. A 575-foot dinger at Navin Field in Detroit isn't the most interesting of the tales, but it'd top this list. He was 38 years old in his 16th season, but he still went yard 28 times over 450 plate appearances and earned a .567 slugging percentage.
National League
On a ball that sped 124 mph off the bat, ESPN's Home Run Tracker estimated a distance of 539 feet if unhindered. Few thoughts will terrify a pitcher more than Giancarlo Stanton lurking inside a Coors Field batter's box. While the Miami Marlins slugger doesn't need a ballpark's help to punish a baseball, he collaborated with the high-altitude venue to produce a 504-foot homer on Aug. 6, 2016. Mark McGwire's monster home run on May 16, 1998, probably didn't travel 545 feet, as initially estimated. ESPN's Home Run Tracker docked his true distance down to 487. It was one of five home runs Baseball Almanac listed as going at least 500 feet in 1998's record-setting season.
It was such a literal moonshot into the roof that it came down onto the field of play after smacking the top of the stadium like a bullet. This was one of the last years we got to see a healthy Strawberry on top of his game, but at least he went out with a bang. On July 21, 1915, as a rookie with the Boston Red Sox, Ruth struck a prodigious drive that sailed far over the rightfield bleachers at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.
Babe Ruth
William J. Jenkinson reported the home run's distance at 502 feet—the longest estimate from IBM's measuring system from 1982 to 1996—in a study published by Baseball Almanac. But why argue over semantics when we can watch some of MLB's best sluggers sock a few dingers? Using the best information available, let's take a stab at locating the longest recorded home runs ever.
"I don't know why they decided to ," Tennyson told me over the phone. Meyer ended up hitting three home runs that night with Ripken's lumber. He then used it the next day, and in his first plate appearance, it broke. "Yeah I always hit home runs, but I prided myself that at every level I played, I hit for average," Meyer said.
Even in an era where pitchers are throwing harder than ever and hitters are making louder contact, we rarely see 500-foot home runs. The longest blast in the StatCast era came in 2005, when Nomar Mazara hit a 505-foot cannon. Giancarlo Stanton is the second only player since 2015 to hit one 500-plus feet. Sure, he has the advantage of playing with increased elevation at Coors Field, but what C.J. Cron managed to do on June 17th, crushing a baseball 486 feet to left field is still impressive. Plenty of other visiting batters have the same opportunities Cron has, but he has the second-longest home run in the season thus far.
He wasn't trying to "memorialize it." He did say a University of Colorado professor called him shortly after the measurements came out and agreed with how he came up with the distance. Babe Ruth had a bunch of moonshots over his baseball-wrecking career. Some ended up in alligator ponds, some cleared fence after fence after fence until there were no more fences left to clear. Although there aremultiple talesof Babe Ruth's hitting his mythical home run beyond 600 feet, no accurate measuring tools existed during his playing days.
Great American Ball Park's second season on Aug. 10, 2004, when he crushed a Jose Lima offering well beyond the fence in center field, which stands 404 feet out. As MLB.com's Ben Weinribnoted, the blast marked the longest homer since MLB installed Statcast in all stadiums in 2015. The new system pinpointed a 115.8-mph exit velocity with a launch angle of 18.3 degrees.
The National League has had more occurrences of the event than the American League, giving it the advantage in this race. Jake Arrieta, who allowed six home runs in his previous outing, has now surpassed Roy Halladay’s record for home runs allowed in a game. Looming over baseball history as an almost mythical figure, Babe Ruth to this day remains one of the sport’s greatest power hitters. Tracking home runs was a much more difficult task in Ruth’s playing days, but his longest was purported to be 575 feet. During the 2021 MLB season, we didn’t see any of the deepest homers approach the record for the longest home run ever hit.
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