My Longest Home Runs
Do you recall a bomb you hit at old Comiskey Park in the mid seventies? I believe you hit it over the center field wall which was 440′, (OK I looked it up). Is this the longest homerun of your career? If not, I’d be curious as to which one was.
I don’t remember that homerun. Comiskey was a very small ball park. It was shorter than Fenway to centerfield, short to leftfield, and shorter than that in right. I had two long homeruns in my career that stand out in my mind:
I hit one into the 3rd or 4th deck (however many they have, it was the top one) in Yankee stadium off Matt Keough. I think Keough hit me with a pitch twice in that game, but third time I got him.
The other homerun, which is probably the biggest shot of my career, was off of Kansas City pitcher Steve Busby in 1975. Mr. Yawkey said it was probably the longest homerun he had ever seen.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Thanks for posting the article, was certainly a great read!
August 21st, 2008 at 4:33 pm
On the Keough homer, you’re close. According to baseball-reference.com, he actually hit you once in Boston about a week earlier, then he hit you in your first at bat of the game in New York. The very next inning you took him out, and did so again two innings after that. For your career, your slugging percentage off Keough was .881. No wonder he felt he needed to hit you.
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:41 am
Jim,
I remember that bomb you hit into the uppertank in left in the Bronx…It was a true BOMB! Not many go upperdeck in leftfield in Yankee Stadium! You are my favorite ballplayer of alltime and you will be in Cooperstown before you know it
~Beau
August 31st, 2008 at 7:29 am
Lets not forget that you are the last player to hit a homerun out of fenway Park to the right of the flagpole in center field (they raised the wall height the following year). I think it was against Oakland. A night game I attended and I can still see that “monster” homer sailing out into the blackness of Landsdown Street.