MAY 22, 1963

A few hit more home runs and a few more hit them with more frequency.

But it’s doubtful if any baseball player ever hit a ball any harder than Mickey Charles Mantle.

David S. Nuttall, for his 1998 book “Mickey Mantle’s Greatest Hits,” researched every one of Mantle’s 536 home runs and counted 100 that traveled an estimated 420 feet or more, and 54 that reached Yankee Stadium’s right-field upper deck.

Then there was the king of them all, the one he hit 36 years ago today.

Batting left-handed in the 11th inning against Kansas City’s Bill Fischer, Mantle sent a towering blast that slammed against the uppermost right-field facade--six feet from clearing the roof--and the ball rebounded all the way back to second base.

Someone later found Yankee Stadium’s blueprints and found that the ball had hit the facade 108 feet 1 inch above the playing field.

A scientist, Dr. James McDonald, estimated for Nuttall that the ball would have been traveling at about 235 feet per second when it hit the facade and would have covered 650 to 700 feet had the facade not been in the way.

Said third base coach Frank Crosetti, a Yankee since 1932: “That was the hardest I ever saw anyone hit a ball--Jimmie Foxx, Ruth, anybody. . . . It went out of here like it was shot out of a cannon.”

Oh, the blast won the game for the Yankees, 8-7.

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Also on this date: In 1963, eight-time Dodger all-star Gil Hodges was named manager of the Washington Senators. . . . In 1975, Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Grove, who won exactly 300 games and had eight 20-victory seasons, died at 75. . . . In 1990, onetime middleweight boxing champion Rocky Graziano died at 71. . . . In 1975, former UCLA trackman and football player Ron Copeland died at 28 of a heart attack.