Pittsburgh – Bow-tied essayists and dyed-in-flannel traditionalists love small ball. Most fans, however, love to see the ball get small.
Dating to 1883, there has been a fascination with big-league power, with watching a ball loosen itself from the Earth’s gravitational pull and soar over the outfield fence and beyond.
The Home Run Derby, staged tonight at PNC Park as part of the All-Star Game festivities, feeds that guilty pleasure.
“It’s like the slam dunk contest,” Rockies all-star Matt Holliday said. “People want to see others do things they can’t do.”
In a game grounded in minuscule details, the home run is part romance, little science. Major- league teams don’t have a universal – or, in some cases, even reliable – method for determining a ball’s flight path since IBM’s “Tale of the Tape” computerized measuring system ceased nearly a decade ago.
Everyone has a story about their favorite blast. But almost none knows how far his particular shot went.
“Glenallen Hill hit a ball onto the rooftop (over the left-field fence in 2000) at Wrigley Field. That was the longest I’ve seen, easily. It started off a baseball and became a Titleist,” said Arizona Diamondbacks broadcaster Mark Grace, a former Chicago Cubs star. “Someone said they announced it at 495 foot. It was closer to 600.”
The Pittsburgh Pirates work off media relations director Jim Trdinich’s detailed sketch drawing with scratched out numbers. The adjusted distances – it’s now determined to take a 455-foot shot to reach the Allegheny River, not 443.3 – speak to the fluid nature of home run marks.
When you watch the Home Run Derby tonight, ESPN will use laser technology to determine the distance of home runs, flashing the number on the TV screen with all the instant gratification of a video game. The reality is most people will remember who hits the longest shot, not who hits the most.
“Pitchers only throw a ball 60 feet. Hitters, they can send a ball 460 feet,” Florida Marlins pitcher Dontrelle Willis said. “People love to see how far it’s going to go.”
For home games, the Rockies have charted all home runs in franchise history, relying on an architectural blueprint to estimate distance. They announce the lengths in the press box. The missing element, however, is trajectory. For the sake of consistency, Jay Alves, the Rockies’ vice president of communications, said the homers are measured from where they land, not where they would have landed.
That helps explain why Coors Field never has hosted a 500-foot home run. Mike Piazza’s 496-foot missile off the Coca-Cola billboard adjacent to the left-field scoreboard in 1997 serves as the zenith.
In Phoenix, the Diamondbacks make a concession for the ball’s arc after figuring the distance based on a detailed photograph of the ballpark.
At Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, the original architect volunteered to measure the distance of Adam Dunn’s 2004 shot off Jose Lima because of its majesty. All it did was clear the batter’s eye, bounce onto Meh- ring Way and stop on a piece of driftwood in the Ohio River.
The result? Try 535 feet.
“That measurement was precise,” Reds media relations director Rob Butcher said.
The same can’t be said of home runs at Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium or Barry Bonds’ crib, AT&T Park. Announcements aren’t made there because no one even bothers guessing the distances, believing they are meaningless.
Given that teams use iPods to analyze at-bats and baseball employs laser-aided QuesTec to chart strikes, it seems odd that home run distances aren’t tracked. QuesTec could do it within a few yards, but no team is interested in paying for the service.
Besides, when David Ortiz and Ryan Howard, among others, take their cuts tonight at PNC Park, it will provide an ample reminder that it’s the feat, not the feet, that really count.
“I saw the only ball hit into the (Allegheny) River, by Daryle Ward. He crushed a changeup,” Rockies pitcher Josh Fogg said. “I didn’t need to know how far it went. I just knew it went a long, long way.”
Staff writer Troy E. Renck can be reached at 303-820-5457 or trenck@denverpost.com.
