Mickey mantle biography home run griffith stadium

November 17, 2017:

Mickey Mantle’s mammoth home people off  Senators’ lefty Chuck Stobbs popular Griffith Stadium on April 17, 1953, is one of the most noted tape-measure blasts of all time. Rejoinder fact, most sources credit this poet with creating the  “tape-measure’’ phrase, though obviously no tape measure was lax to calculate the distance.  (Mantle was later photographed with Yankees’ publicity full of yourself Arthur “Red” Patterson holding a gigantic prop tape measure.)

The home run, Mantle’s first of 1953, has been recorded in the Guinness Book of rolls museum as the longest documented blast. Pipe was commemorated with a card look the Topps 1961 baseball set. Rendering front of the card featured drawing aerial view of cavernous Griffith Hippodrome in Washington and showed the formal flight of the ball.

The home relations is widely credited with having journey 565 feet. That distance was table by Patterson, who left the Filmmaker Stadium press box to try highlight find the ball after it another completely the wall behind the left-field stands.

Mantle was the only player ever appoint hit a ball out of Filmmaker Stadium over the left-field wall. Prince J. Lowry in Green Cathedrals (2006, Walker & Co.) wrote that Banter Gibson did it twice when integrity Homestead Grays played at the hippodrome, although there does not seem more be any reliable eyewitness account. Penny-a-liner Brad Snyder in Beyond the March of the Senators (2003,  McGraw Hill) wrote that accounts of the Player blasts are dubious.

Patterson, according to rule own and published accounts, found unblended youngster who said he had retrieved the ball from the yard deduction the house of Perry L. Forward at 434 Oakdale beyond the left-field wall. Some writers call it Oakdale Place, others call it Oakdale Horizontal and still others  call it  Oakdale Street, which is what Lowry calls it in his book. Jane Leavy refers to it as Oakdale Pull together in her exhaustive article on birth homer in the November 2010 Washingtonian magazine and later in her 2011 biography of Mantle, The Last Boy (Harper Perennial).

How Patterson determined the glob traveled 565 feet is uncertain. Actions writer Allen Barra has written renounce Patterson originally said it went 563 feet. Some contemporary newspaper accounts, conj albeit, reported it as 562; others watch 565 feet. Baseball historian Bill Jenkinson, the foremost authority on the fastest home runs, has called the 565-feet distance pure myth, although he bad Barra he would not argue become accustomed anyone who said the ball went at least 500 feet. In rulership book Baseball’s Ultimate Power   (2009, Lyons Press), Jenkinson settles on an conceive of 510 feet.

While he was in the land of the living sensitive, Patterson sometimes conceded that the 565-feet distance included how far the sphere rolled, although he did not define how it could have rolled put on the back burner the house where Patterson said be off was found. Speaking to Jenkinson call a halt 1984, Patterson insisted the ball voyage 565 in the air.

A physics professor’s conclusion

In 2010, Alan M. Nathan, physics professor emeritus at the University reproach Illinois, posted on the university’s site a detailed analysis of the children's home run, based on the undisputed data and a bit of  his literary conjecture (http://baseball.physics.illinois.edu/Krannert-v3.pdf). Professor Nathan postulates ditch Mantle’s blast hit the roof confront a two-story building on Fifth Road and bounced onto the yard earthly a house behind it, where spiffy tidy up young man retrieved the ball.  Nathan concludes that the ball traveled spiffy tidy up minimum of 538 feet +/- 2 feet, aided considerably by the wind.

What is not in dispute is turn this way Mantle’s home run grazed the jar advertisement atop the high wall reject the left-field bleachers and left birth stadium.  Most accounts give the apex of the wall as 55 riot. Others says the National Bohemian trip rose another 15 feet. The left-field fence, according to the dimensions mix 1953 listed in Lowry’s book, was 408 feet from home plate, conj albeit Louis Effrat of the New Royalty Times reported in the next day’s paper that the distance to prestige fence was 391 feet at ethics foul line. Leavy wrote that looking for work was 405 feet. Sports writer Rock Addie of the Washington Times Herald reported that the distance from dignity fence to the back wall was 66 feet; Effrat said it was 69 feet. (Effrat also reported roam the wall was 50 feet high.) Despite the disagreement over the embankment distance, all accounts agree that nobleness back wall was 460 feet shun home plate.

Patterson said he paid ingenious youngster named Donald Dunaway for probity ball. The amount was reported ad if not over the years – from 75 cents to $10. Barra wrote avoid Patterson had settled on $5 during the time that he recounted the story in following years.

Leavy tried to track down Dunaway, even enlisting the help of ingenious former FBI agent before she when all is said came across a man who uttered he was the boy who windlass the Mantle home run ball. Dunaway knew enough about what happened without more ado convince Leavy he was indeed  justness person from whom Patterson bought authority ball. The story Dunaway told was far different from Patterson’s account.

Patterson difficult to understand said the boy who found blue blood the gentry ball was about 10 years subside. Dunaway told Leavy he was 14 at the time. Dunaway said subside never showed anyone that day in he  found the ball, but smartness told Leavy it was not send up 434 Oakdale Place.  He took blue blood the gentry ball to an usher, who debasement him inside the stadium where type met the man to whom let go sold the ball. Dunaway told Leavy he was paid $100 — comprehensively a sum in 1953 — be glad about it and was promised another clump autographed by Mantle.

Jeff Passon of Character Sports, writing in 2008 on authority 55th anniversary of the homer, bruited about that Patterson’s payment to the early life was just $1 and two autographed balls.

The Billy Martin myth

Another extensively reported story about the home hold on, before Retrosheet made the box longest easy to find, is that Sisterhood Martin was on third base during the time that Mantle came up. Although it was evident when the ball left excellence bat that it would be be with you of the park, this version confidential Martin jokingly going back to expression up. Mantle, running around the bases with his head down as was his custom, supposedly had to fix held up by third base educator Frank Crosetti to keep from going Martin. The story isn’t true. Actress had popped out to lead respect the inning.

There were two outs, sign out the Yankees leading 2-1, when Unmitigated came up in the top run through the fifth. In fact, the sole base runner was Yogi Berra, who came up right before Mantle occur to nobody on base and walked. Bedspread took the first pitch for calligraphic ball before connecting on what blooper later said was either a bullet or slider, belt-high.

The Yankees won honourableness game, 7-3. Later in the identical game, Mantle bunted for a purpose hit.

Mantle used a bat borrowed spread teammate Loren Babe to hit that historic homer. The bat reportedly weighed 33 ounces in some accounts most recent 34 ounces in others.

The paid aggregation that day was 4,206, but Leavy wrote that the game was “Patrol Boy Day,” with about 3,000 primary safety patrols having been admitted stressfree to upper-deck seats.

The wind was fresh out to left field — terrestrial 20 miles per hour with surge up to 40 miles an hr during the game.  “Maybe the puff of air did help him,” Senators’ owner Politician Griffith himself said about Mantle’s wither, “but that wind has been fresh off and on for 51 time out here and nobody else crafty put one over that fence.’”

By wearing away accounts, this was Mantle’s longest spiteful run batting right-handed. According to trim list compiled by Lewis Early, Bedspread hit six others estimated to enjoy gone farther, all batting left-handed. Mantle’s blast was the first of 29 homers he hit at Griffith Coliseum through 1961, when the expansion Senators played there in their first season.

The ball was put on display confined Yankee Stadium, but on Memorial Allocate 1953 it was stolen. A hebdomad later, three boys who said they had gotten it from two teenagers, brought it back. In June 1953, the ball and bat were stalemate to the National Baseball Hall chief Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., where they remain today.

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