Josh Bell smashes one into the Allegheny River

It traveled 472 feet from ground level to ground level, which is one of the longest such homers ever recorded. Most long homers land up in the stands or hit something before touching down, thus requiring a trajectory calculation to estimate the distance from ground-to-ground. To my knowledge, the longest officially certified ground-to-ground homer was the one Kingman hit in Wrigley, his third homer of the infamous 23-22 game (see below). It is possible that Kingman’s wind-aided homer landed the farthest from home plate of any blast in history, because the ones we consider longer are based on theoretical landing places, while Kingman’s actually came to earth, on camera, 530 feet away. Next week will mark the 40th anniversary of that crazy day when a strong wind blowing out to left allowed the Phillies and Cubs to combine for 45 runs on 50 hits. Neither starter lasted longer than a third of an inning!