Who hit the longest home run out of Wrigley Field?
Table of Content
Keiber, the man who has a duffel bag full of baseballs at his home .. The man who dreams of someday playing shortstop for the Cubs, was stunned. There are some days in which he imagines he is playing shortstop.
Kingman remained with the team for the remainder of the season in a limited role. He was released at the end of the season, and signed as a free agent with the Oakland Athletics. Overall, in his three seasons with the Cubs, Kingman hit .278 with 94 home runs and 251 RBI and a .907 OPS in 345 games.
Player News
The Cubs were leading the Cardinals 3-2 with two out and one on in the top of the ninth inning when pinch-hitter Nelson strode to the plate, facing Bob Rush. Centerfielder Andy Pafko ran in, dived for the ball and made a game-saving catch. The home run that has usually been regarded as the longest in Wrigley history was struck by Dave Kingman, then a Met, on April 14, 1976, which landed on the grounds of 3705 Kenmore. Baseball’s Ultimate Power a comprehensive list of the longest home runs, lists the Kingman shot at 540 feet (only Babe Ruth has longer homers in Jenkinson’s listings), and the Clemente homer at 510 feet. I witnessed the Kingman home run personally, it remains one of my indelible baseball memories. In 1989, Kingman played for the West Palm Beach Tropics of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, alongside other former major league players.
Barry Chin/Globe Staff For a night, baseball’s defining distances will no longer be 60 feet, 6 inches or 90 feet. According to the Guinness Book of World Records , the longest home run ever measured was hit by Roy “Dizzy” Carlyle in a minor league game. The ball traveled 188 m before landing on the ground outside the ballpark. Dave Kingman’s 530-foot bomb at Wrigley Field On a windy day at Wrigley Field, Cubs slugger Dave Kingman got into a pitch and drove it straight toward a stoop on Waveland Avenue. Contemporary estimates greatly exaggerated the distance, but a reliable estimate places the mammoth shot at 530 feet.
Dave Kingman Home Runs
This time there was only a smattering of applause from the slim crowd of 5,264 as Banks faced the Braves' Pat Jarvis in the second inning. Pafko then looked at Barlick in disbelief and started to argue. It wasn't until Nelson was a few steps from home plate that Pafko threw the ball.
On July 11, 1987, Kingman signed a minor league deal with the San Francisco Giants during the 1987 season. After twenty games at AAA Phoenix in which he batted .203 with two home runs and 11 RBI, he retired from baseball. Clemente's homer exhibits problems in specifying an exact landing spot.
Dave Kingman in 1979 vs. Glenallen Hill in 2000
His .613 slugging percentage in 1979 was almost 50 points higher than that of his next closest National League competitor, Schmidt. Kingman finished eleventh in NL MVP balloting that year and led the league in strikeouts for the first time in his career . 507 meters Only four times in history has a ball been hit entirely out of Dodger Stadium, with two of those balls being hit by Pirates legend Willie Stargell. Mike Piazza and Mark McGwire also achieved it, but Stargell hit the longest of the four bombs and the first one in 1969. Kingman University in Palmdale, California, has a stadium named after him.
Kingman had an excellent performance in Los Angeles on May 14, 1978, when he again hit three home runs against the Dodgers, including a three-run shot in the top of the 15th inning that gave the Cubs a 10–7 victory. Eight of the Cubs' ten runs were driven in by Kingman. Following the game, radio reporter Paul Olden asked Dodgers' manager Tommy Lasorda his opinion of Kingman's performance that day, inspiring an oft-replayed obscenity-laced tirade. In 1969, Kingman had a 11–4 win–loss record with a 1.38 earned run average and batted .250 with four home runs and 16 runs batted in as a part-time hitter for USC. In the 1970 USC NCAA Championship Season, Kingman hit .355 with nine home runs and 25 RBIs, exclusively as a hitter, despite missing time mid-season due to injury.
Brown, figuring Hartnett couldn't hit what he couldn't see, wound up and let loose with a fastball. The pitch wasn't seen by many, but it was heard as Hartnett rocketed the ball into the left-field bleachers for a 6-5 Cub victory. In the first game, manager Hartnett went with sore-armed Dizzy Dean and he escaped with a 2-1 victory, cutting Pittsburgh's lead to a half-game. The following day, the skies were cloudy and gray. And the outlook was gloomy as the Pirates led 3-1 after six innings and 5-3 after 7½. But the Cubs put two runs across to tie the score 5-5 after eight innings.
The Cubs went on to win 6-5, but Kingman's king-sized blow took center stage. Many agreed it was the longest homer ever hit at Wrigley Field. Others say if Kingman could have straightened it out, the ball would've hit the scoreboard.
The ball traveled an estimated 464 feet down the right-field line at Dodger Stadium. Statcast created the term "no-doubt home runs" to describe home runs that would have gone out of all 30 major league ballparks. His 465-foot home run against Minnesota's Kyle Gibson on Aug. 3 was the biggest home run by a Royal since Brandon Moss' 474-foot homer off Minnesota's Jose Berrios on July 1, 2017.
"My father almost played shortstop with the Cubs back in 1946," says Keiber, 25-year-old father of three who is employed as an assistant bar manager in Waukegan. "He tried out with them, but was assigned to the minors, and he didn't last long. The money wasn't very good and he had a family to support." On Monday, Banks remained a triple threat with another three-bagger. And Tuesday hardly seemed like a day for heroics. A fog rolled in and out and was replaced by a morning downpour. The skies were murky and it was damp, but the show went on against the Atlanta Braves.
Kingman began as a pitcher before being converted to an outfielder. It was also the longest home run ever hit at Dodger Stadium until Giancarlo Stanton hit one 470 feet in 2017. Trout's 464-foot home shot was his fifth-biggest home run monitored by Statcast, and it was also the longest home run against right-hander Zack Greinke since Statcast began tracking in 2015.
In separate deals, the new organization also reacquired Rusty Staub, and two seasons later, Tom Seaver. Injured, Kingman played in 81 games in 1980, hitting .278 with 18 home runs and 57 RBI. Kingman was batting .209 with nine home runs when he became one of the three players traded in the "Midnight Massacre" by the New York Mets. After signing with the Giants, Kingman played for the Class AA Amarillo Giants in 1970 after the College World Series victory. He hit .295 with 15 home runs and 45 RBIs in 60 games.
Anyone standing at the south side of the stoop could provide a location accurate to a radius of a few feet at worst. What I propose is to use the measuring tools of Photoshop to delineate, compare, and estimate the Clemente and Kingman clouts. This is meant to be fun, and perhaps instructive.
Comments
Post a Comment