Baseball fans in general and fans NewMexiKen’s age in particular should appreciate the HBO documentary on Mickey Mantle, which premiered tonight. I wasn’t a Yankee fan — indeed I was a Yankee-hater then — but he was a hero in the 1950s of a type that no one today seems to approach (ill-deserved as much of it may have been). It’s a well done program.
I saw Mantle play twice, 53 and 49 years ago. I can remember both games and especially his out-of-the-park homerun at Tiger (then Briggs) Stadium in 1956 — over the third deck’s 94-foot-high roof in right field — June 18, 1956.
The following describes a homer Mantle hit in the same park in 1960.
Mantle unloaded a tremendous homer over the right-field roof through a light tower (which it may have grazed) and out of the park. The pitcher was Paul Foytack. Years later researcher Paul Susman, Ph.D. found eyewitnesses who confirmed exactly where the ball landed on the fly. Dr. Susman then measured the distance, which turned out to be an astonishing 643 feet! This was almost certainly the longest home run Mickey hit in a regular season game that could actually be measured to the spot it landed, and probably the longest homer anyone ever hit in a regular season game that could be measured to the actual landing point. This homer is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest homer ever “measured trigonometrically.”
Same Tiger pitcher served up both of these (1956, 1960) — Paul Foytack.