While major-league hitters continue to take target practice in this year of the flubber-filled ball, the targets themselves finally are getting some long due recognition.
One night it was Ken Griffey Jr., hitting one over the Hard Rock Cafe in Toronto’s SkyDome. One fine spring afternoon it was Sammy Sosa poking one through a Frenchman’s window in an apartment building on Waveland Avenue across the street from Wrigley Field.
The oldest and most imposing target of them all, the hallowed roof of Tiger Stadium in Detroit, already has been cleared twice–by Detroit’s Melvin Nieves and Toronto’s Carlos Delgado. And Oakland’s Mark McGwire set a long-distance record for a visiting player at new Comiskey Park on July 23 with a 452-foot home run off Alex Fernandez, then broke it one day later with a 470-foot clout off James Baldwin.
Not only are players hitting baseballs like they are going out style in 1996, they seem to be sending them toward uncharted territory in and outside ballparks all across North America. Like the meteorite from Mars that has been water-cooler talk around the world, these cometlike projectiles have been the topic of discussion around batting cages all summer.
Ask any hitter and he’ll tell you it’s foolish to shoot for long-distance targets such as a restaurant, an apartment building or a rooftop.
“I don’t worry about the distance,” Griffey said. “As long as it goes over the fence and I’ve touched all four and I go back into the dugout, I’m happy.”
Still, there is an undeniable attraction in watching a ball sail a long, long way before hitting an object that appears almost unreachable. Always has been. Targets have always been a part of baseball lore, whether they’re billboards, buildings or car dealerships.
In old Crosley Field in Cincinnati, right-handed power hitters could aim at the “Hit This Sign and Get a Siebler Suit” ad outside the left-field wall, or the “Superior Towel and Linen Service (Always Glad to Serve You)” sign just below it. At old Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Dem Bums would swing for the 3-foot-high, 30-foot-long sign paid for by clothier Abe Stark: “Hit Sign Win Suit.”
The long-ball hitter was definitely in mind when the architects designed a 42,000-seat ballpark that’s to be constructed in the China Basin area of San Francisco for the 2000 season. You want aesthetics? A home run down the right-field line has to travel only 306 feet and a shot that goes 350 feet or longer will splash into San Francisco Bay.
Sounds like a winner, although Seattle pitcher Chris Bosio joked the fight for home run balls could be costly.
“The Giants will have to have insurance for all the people who are going to be diving into the bay,” Bosio said.
When a player hits one into the fountains in Kansas City, they refer to it as going “in the drink.” Will left-handed power hitters in the National League salivate over the prospect of “Going Bay”?
“No, not at all,” said White Sox slugger Frank Thomas. “That’s the worst thing you can do. If you try to hit a ball into the bay there, it’ll screw up your swing.”
“We’re not going up there trying to hit it 700 feet,” Griffey added. “If you try to hit it 700 feet, you’re going to hit a one-hopper back to the pitcher and make a left-hand turn.”
So maybe he’s not trying, but Griffey has two of the longest clouts in two relatively new ballparks, SkyDome and Camden Yards, which has an old warehouse across Eutaw Street as a backdrop for lefty hitters. When Camden was on the drawing boards in Baltimore, the architects decided to leave the brick warehouse that runs parallel to the right-field fence. Ever since, players have tried to hit a ball off it. Griffey succeeded, albeit against batting practice pitching during an All-Star home run contest.
“I was up against Barry Bonds, Dave Justice and Bobby Bonilla,” Griffey said. “And I was the little guy in that group. Those guys got me by between 10 to 40 pounds, maybe more. I got one up, and the wind carried it out there.”
Griffey’s feat has yet to be matched. Still, they keep trying. One lazy day before a game in June, the Orioles’ Bonilla, Rafael Palmeiro and Roberto Alomar went to home plate and took turns trying to hit a ball off the warehouse. They cheated a bit, using aluminum bats.
No dice.
Earlier this year, Griffey became the first player to hit one over the Hard Rock Cafe in the SkyDome’s right-field upper deck.
“Just say above `the restaurant.’ ” Griffey pleaded to a reporter. “Don’t say ‘Hard Rock Cafe’ in the paper.”
Griffey, it seems, is part-owner of the All-Star Cafe, a competitor of the Hard Rock for the potato-skins-and-low-calorie-beer crowd. Weeks after Griffey’s “above the restaurant” shot, on May 28, White Sox third baseman Robin Ventura rocked a homer off the top of the “Windows” restaurant in straightaway center field. Griffey, of “I don’t care how far they go, as long as I touch all the bases” fame, argued that Ventura was shortchanged by Blue Jays’ statisticians in their estimated distance of his “a la carte” shot.
“Just like they shortchanged me,” Griffey said, referring to the 430-foot estimate of his SkyDome blast. “They have a guy who goes out and measures each seat, but they don’t figure the trajectory of the ball and everything.”
Four-hundred and thirty feet is nothing, especially when compared to some of the legendary homers of all-time. On April 17, 1953, Mickey Mantle cranked one off Washington Senators pitcher Chuck Stobbs that went over the distant left-field wall of old Griffith Stadium and landed in a yard behind a three-story tenament. The alleged distance: 565 feet from home. . In 1926, Babe Ruth supposedly hit a ball out of Tiger Stadium that went anywhere from 625 feet to 850 feet. Of course, Ruth used a 44-ounce bat and that was before they added a second deck in right field. But whether the distance was true or hype, it is known Ruth paid $20 for the ball.
Today’s long-distance dialers should take a tip from the master when it comes to celebrating long-ball feats. In Game 4 of the 1926 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Ruth hit three home runs in Sportsman’s Park, including one over right-center field in the third inning that landed on Grand Avenue and busted the window of Wells Chevrolet Co. The next day, the Babe was at the dealership, posing for pictures in front of the broken window.
If Sosa had the marketing skills of a Ruth, or even a Dennis Rodman, he already would have a poster out of him standing in front of the broken window with a bat over his shoulder and the words “Window Smashin’ Sammy.”
Waveland and Sheffield Avenues are frequently hit targets, but putting one onto Trumbull Avenue in Motown is another story altogether. Since Tiger Stadium was rebuilt along its present lines in 1938, 29 home runs have been hit over the roof and out of the stadium, including Nieves’ blast off the Sox’s Matt Karchner in May. Sox catcher Chad Kreuter had been the last one to do it before Nieves, off Jaime Navarro in 1994.
“I’m just a footnote now,” Kreuter sighed after Nieves’ shot.
Twenty-six of the blasts have gone over the right-field roof, including Delgado’s on July 6. The roof shot bounced once on Trumbull, missed a parked police cruiser by an estimated 10 feet then bounded into the lumber yard of Brooks’ Ace Hardware. Very cool.
A police officer brought the ball to the Toronto clubhouse.
“He told me, `You almost hit my partner,’ ” Delgado said.
The most difficult feat in baseball, besides getting a “How are you” from Albert Belle, may be hitting one over the more distant left-field roof of Tiger Stadium. Only three have done it: Harmon Killebrew (off Jim Bunning in 1962), Frank Howard (off Mickey Lolich in 1968) and Cecil Fielder (off Dave Stewart in 1990). Frank Thomas hit back-to-back roof shots over the left-field roof during batting practice on May 18, but shrugged it off.
“It’s only BP,” Thomas said. “Doesn’t count.”
Roof shots are an awesome sight, as anyone who watched Ron Kittle or Harold Baines or Carlton Fisk hit one at old Comiskey can tell you. Thomas played only two months in old Comiskey Park, and never belted one over the left-field roof. Current Kansas City batting coach Greg Luzinski poked three over it with the Sox.
“You’re not trying to do it,” Luzinski said. “You’re just trying to get in good hitting position. It just goes to show you, your strength takes over. I hit some long balls, and they still only counted for one.”
Perhaps the most famous home run backdrop in the game is the Green Monster in Fenway Park, which stands 35 feet high and is listed as 310 feet down the left-field line. However, Boston owner John Harrington is pushing to have a new, skybox-filled ballpark built, which would mean farewell to a New England institution and the most beloved piece of real estate in Massachusetts.
Boston first baseman Mo Vaughn is a big fan of the Monster, but isn’t worried about its eminent demise.
“I think a new ballpark will help,” Vaughn said. “We haven’t had too many World Series here. Sometimes you think that things that are old are fine, but you need things like new Comiskey Park. I’m sure there will be a Monster. They’ll either take this one with them or they’ll build another one.”
Easy for Mo to say. He’s left-handed. But whether it’s over the “Monster,” off the “Windows” or through a window on Waveland Avenue, hitting one into oblivion is all the rage in ’96. Still, Griffey insists that the most fun-to-watch home run is the one that barely makes it over an outfielder’s outstretched glove.
“The ones that as soon as they leave the bat–that’s gone!–they’re OK,” Griffey said. “But it’s more exciting for the ones that just go over the fence, because you say, `OK, that one has a chance, OK . . .OK . . .OK . . .’ For a fan, and for the outfielders, we like those types. If you get back to the wall, maybe you have a chance for it.”
