Bo’s Homer Doesn’t Quite Measure Up

Bo Jackson hit a tape-measure home run off Nolan Ryan in Arlington, Tex., Tuesday night, but he has a lot of distance to cover before he catches up with Mickey Mantle, according to the man who virtually invented the term “tape-measure homer.”

Arthur E. (Red) Patterson was the New York Yankees’ publicity man in 1953, when Mantle hit what many still believe to be baseball’s longest home run.

Patterson went outside Griffith Stadium that night, April 17, 1953, stepped off the distance of a majestic Mantle home run and came up with a figure of 565 feet.

When he worked for the Yankees, Patterson said he saw Mantle hit “about a dozen” home runs in the 450- to 500-foot class. But the Washington blast, he says, outdistanced them all.

Add Mantle: The homer seems to get a little longer every time Patterson tells the story. When contacted Wednesday, Patterson, now 80, described it again.

Mantle, batting right-handed against left-hander Chuck Stobbs, hit a drive that was helped by a wind.

“The ball not only cleared the left-field bleachers, but went out of the park about halfway up the scoreboard, which was on top of the bleachers,” recalled Patterson, now a special consultant for the Angels.

“It was still going up when it went out.

“I found a kid with the ball, and he told me the ball came down ‘In a lady’s back yard.’ He showed me the spot and I stepped it off--I never really used a tape measure--to the outfield fence. Then I added the home-to-fence distance inside the park.

“I gave the kid $10 for the ball, got Mantle’s bat, and convinced the Yankees to put them on display in the Yankee Stadium lobby.

“We did, and someone stole them.

“Our radio announcer, Mel Allen, made pleas every day for them to be returned, that no questions would be asked. Some kid returned them. He told us he took them.

“The (New York) writers accused me of fabricating the whole thing, but it’s a true story. The bat and ball are in the Hall of Fame today.”

On Tuesday, Jackson’s homer traveled 461 feet, according to the IBM tape measure chip in Arlington Stadium’s scoreboard. According to Kansas City writers, it was Jackson’s second-longest homer. He hit a 475-footer in 1986.

For Added Measure: Only one player, Willie Stargell, ever hit a fair ball out of Dodger Stadium, and he did it twice. The first was a 506-foot 6-inch blast off Alan Foster in 1969; the second a 470-footer off Andy Messersmith in 1973.

Stargell’s 1969 homer cleared the outfield pavilion roof on the fly. The 1973 shot hit the roof, then bounced out of the stadium.

Only four players, according to the Dodgers, ever reached the loge level (second level) with home runs: Frank Howard, Dave Kingman (twice), Dave Parker and Nick Esasky.

For Short Measure: There can be no discussion of tape-measure homers without mention of Frank Howard’s rocket launched at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh in 1960. Someone stepped that one off at 565 feet, too.

For decades, Babe Ruth was credited for a spring training homer in Tampa, Fla., that traveled anywhere from 560 to 656 feet, depending on who was telling the story.

Another epic Mantle home run occurred at Yankee Stadium in 1963. Batting left-handed against Kansas City’s Bill Fischer, Mantle hit a ball that struck the upper-deck facade, 18 inches below the roof. It was one of two homers Mantle hit off the facade.

There is no record of anyone hitting a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium, but there are stories of Josh Gibson accomplishing the feat in a Negro League game.

For Final Measure: Steve Gietschier, archivist at the Sporting News, says he’s never seen a list of baseball’s longest homers.

“We have a thick file labeled ‘tape-measure homers,’ but it’s just old clippings,” he said. “From looking at it, I’d say every well-known home run hitter in the game has hit at least one.”

Dept. of Brains and Spikes: One of the entries in the women’s mile at the Aug. 6 Jack-in-the-Box Invitational track meet at UCLA is Kathy Kanes, who recently received her doctorate in chemistry at Caltech.

Wait a minute. Caltech?

“She’s probably on the top-50 list of U.S. women milers,” meet director Al Franken said. “She’s never going to beat Mary Slaney. But then, Mary Slaney never explained room temperature fusion to me, either.”

Quotebook: “I enjoy physical contact,” said Dennis Byrd, 270-pound defensive lineman from Tulsa and a New York Jet draft pick. “I really like to hit. This is the only sport except boxing where you can abuse someone and not go to jail for it.”