1961 Topps # 406 Mantle Blasts 565 FT. Home Run

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by doug.goodman

The link I posted from the HOF notes that 565 included travel after it landed

Who cares this far removed from the event. Topps made a really cool card of it.

[Beercan collector]

Hitting a beer sign 460 feet away is good enough for me .

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by Beercan collector

Hitting a beer sign 460 feet away is good enough for me .

Shouldn't Mantle have won some free beer? Like that sign they used to have in the outfield at one of the ballparks. Hit this sign and win a free suit. Was that what it was?

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

Originally Posted by GasHouseGang

Shouldn't Mantle have won some free beer?

They could have at least given him a dollar.

[jp1216]

Looked up more on the weather on April 17, 1953 in D.C.
Typical Spring day. Temps in the 60s with a strong wind out of the west. Found some hourly data which doesn't account for gusts. The ball certainly had a push along the way.

[ASF123]

Originally Posted by GasHouseGang

Shouldn't Mantle have won some free beer? Like that sign they used to have in the outfield at one of the ballparks. Hit this sign and win a free suit. Was that what it was?

Pretty sure having to pay for beer was not much of an issue for the Mick.

[oldjudge]

Interesting article. So the professor concludes that the minimum distance the ball could traveled was 538 feet. That includes losing velocity by glancing off a sign. It makes it appear that if the ball had not clipped the sign it might have traveled over 565 feet and even ignoring the loss of velocity from glancing off the sign it could have traveled 565 feet.

[robw1959]

I guess I need to weigh in on this. Or at least Bill Jenkinson will. He authored the book titled, "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs." On page 197 of the book, Jenkinson writes:

In this case, Mickey didn't hit the ball nearly 565 feet, but more likely about 510 feet. The fact is that Yankee publicist Red Patterson went in search of the ball as soon as it left the premises and found a ten-year-old boy holding it in a backyard across the street. Patterson did his job too well when he announced that it was 563 feet (2 feet were soon added for the thickness of the outer stadium wall) to the point where the gall was located. The media went crazy, reporting that the ball had flown 565 feet. When I interviewed Patterson thirty years later, he stated in a rather bemused fashion that he had wondered all those years why nobody had ever challenged the reputed distance. He readily acknowledged that he had no idea where the ball actually landed.

The truth is that it was 462 feet to the point where the ball left the stadium. The horsehide was also about fifty feet above ground level and on a rapidly declining trajectory. Plus, the ball actually glanced off an advertising sign as it left the lot. My conclusion, which is backed by computer analysis, is the this drive flew about 510 feet.

He goes on to state that it was still an historic shot, as some of the game's strongest right-handed hitters had plenty of chances at Washington's Griffith Stadium, including Jimmy Foxx and Josh Gibson, who each played close to 150 games there. But only Mantle cleared that 32-row stand of bleachers.