By Cliff Corcoran
Aaron Judge almost hit a ball out of Safeco Field Friday night. On Saturday, Bryce Harper launched a moonshot against the D-backs in Arizona.
They both must be seen to be believed.
Prior to Friday night, Judge had already hit home runs of 448, 456, 457 and 495 feet, that last the longest hit in the Major Leagues this season. Yet, his home run Friday night and Harper’s blast are likely to endure long in the collective consciousness, primarily because they were so majestic. Will they join the ranks of these legendary homers, aesthetically-speaking?
Reggie Jackson, 1971 All-Star Game, Tiger Stadium
By far the longest home run on this list, Jackson’s famous All-Star Game home run came with the American League trailing 3-0 in the bottom of the third inning. He hit a letters-high fastball from National League starter Dock Ellis off the transformer on the roof over Tiger Stadium’s right-field stands; in fact, the ball was hit so hard, the camera failed to follow it, instead searching the upper deck for the ball until it fell in front of the shot after slamming into that transformer. Jackson knew it was gone from the moment of contact, flinging his bat to the ground at the conclusion of his follow-through and admiring his shot the whole way. Just listen to the sound it makes on contact.
Home run historian Bill Jenkinson estimates Jackson’s shot at 540 feet based on the fact that the transformer was 95 feet above the field, 370 feet from home
Dave Kingman, May 17, 1979, Wrigley Field
It’s safe to say the wind was blowing out at Wrigley Field on May 17, 1979, when the Phillies and Cubs played one of the highest-scoring games in Major League history, which the Phillies ultimately won 23-22 in ten innings. The two teams combined to hit 11 home runs in the game, but Kong’s third shot of the game, a two-out solo shot off veteran righty Ron Reed that cut Philadelphia’s lead to 21-19, truly amazed. In the era before StatcastTM, we can only guess at how far it went via the footage available, where the ball appears to bounce in front of the second house on Kenmore Ave. That would put Kingman’s shot right around 490 feet — impressive, but far from Kingman’s personal best (per Jenkinson, Kingman visited Wrigley as a Met three years earlier and hit another ball at Wrigley that travelled 540 feet).
Darryl Strawberry, April 4, 1988, Stade Olympique, Montreal
After hitting a career-high 39 home runs in 1987, Strawberry opened the 1988 season by going 4-for-4 with two home runs on Opening Day in Montreal for the Mets. His second home run, a seventh-inning solo shot down the left-field line off Expos reliever Randy St. Claire, hit the concrete rim of the roof of le Stade Olympique, dropping to the turf and confusing everyone, including the fans, the broadcasters and Strawberry himself, who briefly stopped at second before being sent home by the umpires. Jenkinson thinks it would have gone 505 feet unencumbered, making it the longest of Strawberry’s career.
Jose Canseco, ALCS Game 4, 1989, SkyDome, Toronto
A year after becoming the first player to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in a season, Oakland A’s slugger Canseco continued to amaze with this two-out solo shot off the Blue Jays’ Mike Flanagan into the upper deck in left field at Toronto’s new SkyDome. The then-state-of-the-art stadium had just opened that June, and no one had ever seen a ball hit to that part of the park before Canseco’s shot.
Andres Galarraga, May 31, 1997, Pro Player Stadium, Miami
With two outs and a 2-2 count, Marlins ace Kevin Brown threw Galarraga a cement-mixer slider that hung over the plate. Galarraga deposited it halfway up the tarped-over upper deck in Joe Robbie-cum-Pro Player Stadium. The home run was initially estimated at 579 feet, although Jenkinson lists it at 509 feet.
Mike Piazza, Sept. 21, 1997, Dodger Stadium
Only two players have ever hit a fair ball out of Dodger Stadium. Willie Stargell did it twice, clearing the right-field roof with the visiting Pirates in 1969 and 1973. The only Dodger ever to do it was Piazza, who skipped one off the left-field roof with this third-inning shot off the Rockies’ Frank Castillo in 1997, the Hall of Fame catcher’s best Major League season. Jenkinson estimates it at 478 feet, the fifth-longest of Piazza’s career.
Glenallen Hill, May 11, 2000, Wrigley Field
Hill’s second-inning solo shot off the Brewers’ Steve Woodard famously landed on the roof of one of the buildings across Waveland Avenue. Google Maps measurements put that landing spot about 435 feet from home plate, and Jenkinson estimates that the ball would have gone a full 500 feet had it reached field level unencumbered. Hill’s was undoubtedly a monstrous home run, but it was the novelty of its landing place that made it memorable.
Juan Encarnacion, July 24, 2001, Yankee Stadium
This eighth-inning solo shot off Ramiro Mendoza by Encarnacion (then with the Tigers) might not loom as large as some of the others on this list, but it stands out in my mind for being the only home run ever to land in the left-field bleachers of the remodeled Yankee Stadium.
Barry Bonds, June 8, 2002, Yankee Stadium
This was Bonds, in year two of his four-year Babe Ruth period, getting his first and only crack at the House that Ruth Built. Bonds hit just one homer in a three-game series, but it was a memorable one, landing almost half-way up the old ballpark’s massive upper deck down the left-field line. The Giants won, 4-3.
Kris Bryant, Sept. 6, 2015, Wrigley Field
Bryant launched this one off the D-backs’ Rubby De La Rosa to lead off the fifth inning of a 6-4 Cubs win during Chicago’s second-half surge toward the postseason in 2015. It was the longest home run hit in the first year of league-wide Statcast™ and is still tied for the second-longest home run in the brief Statcast™ era, with Judge’s 495-footer from earlier this year behind a less memorable 504-foot shot by Giancarlo Stanton at Coors Field from 2016. What made it memorable, however, wasn’t the distance in and of itself, but the fact that the ball hit roughly halfway up the new digital left-field scoreboard at Wrigley Field, which was installed before the 2015 season. If that scoreboard wasn’t there, the ball likely would have bounced down North Kenmore Ave., like Kingman’s shot 36 years earlier.
Kyle Schwarber, NLDS Game 4, 2015, Wrigley Field
The Cubs installed two new scoreboards for the 2015 season, and both of them factored in memorable home runs. The top of the right-field scoreboard was the final resting place of the home run hit by rookie Schwarber to lead off the bottom of the seventh of Game 4 of the National League Championship Series against the Cardinals, a game Chicago won 6-4 to clinch the series. Statcast™ measured the shot at 419 feet, making it the shortest home run on this list, but the Cubs have nonetheless immortalized it by encasing the ball in Plexiglas where it came to a rest below the “s” in the giant neon Budweiser sign atop that scoreboard.
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Cliff Corcoran is a Sports on Earth contributor and a regular guest analyst on MLB Network. An editor or contributor to 13 books about baseball, including seven Baseball Prospectus annuals, he spent the last 10 seasons covering baseball for SI.com and has also written for USA Today and SB Nation, among others.
