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Only three teams — Yankees, Braves and Brewers — hit more home runs than the 214 launched by the Astros this season. Some of those homers were absolute missiles, including three balls Yordan Alvarez deposited into Minute Maid Park's Budweiser Brew House party deck deep beyond the center field fence. This blast, the second on the list from Dunn, makes his first look like a chip shot and this time he may have used the driver. On August 10th of the 2004 season, Dunn connected on one of his 46 on the season and put himself in the top 3 for farthest dingers. He also became the only man, and still stands as so, to hit a ball clear out of The Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.
The Green Monster is the most famous piece of architecture in sports. But the beauty of Fenway’s design is much deeper than just the leftfield wall made to compensate for a lack of real estate. In center, “The Triangle” creates a pocket of space where only the prodigious power hitter can launch a ball and only Jackie Bradley Jr. can track it down.
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Like Dunn, McGwire hits our list for a second time with another blast from his days in Oakland. It happened on June 24th, 1996 when Big Mac took the big lefty way back to the upper level. No ever will repeat the feat, not that many seemingly had the ability to make such connections on that ball like McGwire could.
The Jays will open the 2021 season playing at their spring training facility in Dunedin, Fla., TD Ballpark. The stadium underwent a significant renovation before the 2020 season, which included lowering the height of the leftfield fence. The current layout is a bit like a mirror image of Target Field in Minneapolis. It features a deep power alley in left-center and a tall fence in right. In baseball’s slightly less professional days, it was played in stadiums that may as well have been designed by M.C. The Polo Grounds in New York was 257 feet down the line in right but 483 feet to center.
PNC Park (Pirates)
The distances are nearly symmetrical but the fences meet at some unexpected angles, which at least adds some uncertainty to balls hit off the wall. Ask any baseball fan what they love most about the sport and they’ll likely give you a similar answer, something that makes baseball unique among all other games. The definition of a frozen rope Jim Thome’s dinger on July 3, 1999, is one to remember. In the second game of a doubleheader, Thomas took a 3-1 pitch and sent it towering to left-center and it didn’t stay in the stadium long. After bouncing once on the concourse, it fell onto the street as a souvenir that holds a place in MLB history.
Alvarez hit two home runs in the home opener, but it was this one in the seventh that ended up in the back corner of the Astros bullpen that cracked the Top 20 list.
Kyle Tucker, 445 feet (Aug. 19 at Braves)
He came in one shy on September 27th and then took lefty Glendon Rusch for a ride, past centerfield. His eight in D 40th of the season was a solo shot that gave him the century mark on a blast to the deepest part of the park, beating Sexson’s blast from four years earlier by a foot. On the whole, Progressive Field slightly favors hitters over pitchers, but the 19-foot wall in leftfield spells doom for many a ball that would be gone in many other stadiums. Holliday's homer came off the bat at 113.8 mph, his hardest-hit homer of the Statcast era.
Even in an era where pitchers are throwing harder than ever and hitters are making louder contact, we rarely see 500-foot home runs. The longest blast in the StatCast era came in 2005, when Nomar Mazara hit a 505-foot cannon. Giancarlo Stanton is the second only player since 2015 to hit one 500-plus feet.
Nomar Mazara, Texas Rangers outfielder – 505 feet, Globe Life Park
Future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux was pitching for the Chicago Cubs. Not only is this homer, which banged off the facade of the upper deck in Oakland, the longest home run of the Astros season, it's the longest of Alvarez's career thus far. Alvarez hit three homers in this 5-0 win over Oakland and each shot was so monstrous, they're all on this list, including this one that landed near the Phillips 66 pump. The Astros catcher hit two of his 15 home runs this day against the Angels, including this blast, which came on the first pitch of the sixth inning.
You get the feeling Meyer, modest and soft-spoken over the phone, was almost frightened by the attention. "The first one I hit barely went over the fence, so everybody on the other team was yelling cheapie and all that," Meyer said. There's home run king Barry Bonds, there's Adam Dunn depositing baseballs into other states.
Adam Dunn hit 462 home runs in his career, earning a reputation as one of the best home-run threats during his era. On Aug. 10, 2004, in a matchup against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Dunn delivered a moment he’ll never forget. In what remains the longest home run ever at Great American Ball Park, the baseball rocketed out and finished with an estimated distance of 535 feet. Cedeno, a 23-year-old with the Diamondbacks’ Double-A affiliate, isn’t one of the club’s top 40 prospects .
In the Astros' 11th straight win, Alvarez hit his 11th home run of the season, bouncing this one off the Nationals' logo in the center field batter's eye. On a night in which Alvarez would hit three homers all over 430 feet, he deposited his first one of the game into the front row of Minute Maid Park's Budweiser Brew House party deck. Camden Yards was a trailblazer in the movement toward retro-style parks. One of the old-school features is a big out-of-town scoreboard built into the rightfield wall. It climbs 21 feet into the air, which makes any ball hit over it and toward the warehouses across the street seem that much more impressive.
The center field home run was Conforto’s 13th homer of the season. On June 26, 2021, St. Louis Cardinals‘ first baseman Paul Goldschmidt hit a 470-foot home run to center field off of Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher J.T. The 92.3 mph fastball had a 108.9 mph exit velocity off Goldschmidt’s bat. On April 4th, 1988, Darryl Strawberry opened the season for the Mets with this blast that on its way out to right field hit the top of the roof.
If MLB makes changes to the baseballs and rules are adjusted that favors hitters more, maybe Stanton tops this mark in 2022. One thing is for certain, Stanton is fully capable of adding another historic milestone to the list of the longest home runs ever. Here are the longest home runs in the Home Run Derby, during the StatCast era, away from Coors Field. Meyer's high school coach in Honolulu still raves about his power, saying he could come out right now and still hit homers.
This blast from Sexson reminds us all why he’s not just one of the best names in sports, but that he was also a home run and RBI producer as well. PNC has this nifty little feature that I hadn’t noticed until I started working on this project. The leftfield wall there is pushed back, forming a deep corner in left-center. That pocket is the deepest part of the park at 410 feet, 11 feet farther than dead center.
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