The 2012 Home Run Derby

Yours truly watched some, but not all, of the Home Run Derby preceding this year's All-Star game. I could only take so much of the screaming going on.

No, not by the fans, and certainly not by the players, but by the announcer. That would be Chris (they don't call him Boomer for nothing) Berman of ESPN. He was calling the shots, no pun intended, during the home run contest. I understand announcers doing their best to hype whatever action is happening, but this guy is way over the top. Anything that can remotely be construed as a semi-highlight seems to send Berman into some sort of orgasmic state. There's getting into sports, but this is ridiculous.

Up come the batters for the contest. Crack. The baseball soars. "It's a MOON shot", roared Berman. The ball went 402 feet. In a lot of major league baseball stadiums, that would be nothing more than a long out.

Crack. "Back, back, back, back, back" screamed the Boomer with his signature line. The only people that were going back were the kids in the outfield trying to catch it. The ball landed on the warning track.

Crack. "Oh, Oh, OH -- it's GONE". 

That one checked in at 390+ feet. Hardly the stuff of legend.

Crack. Holy cow, look at THAT one, he said in awe. It went 356 feet, barely making it into the stands. 356 feet is supposed to be impressive? I used to play in slow pitch leagues where the big boppers could hit SOFTBALLS further than that.

Crack. He got ALL OF IT.  It was estimated at about 400. Funny how it seemed to land pretty close to the one that was judged 356. Go figure.

Lots of balls by different batters were hit in the 420-430 range. People like the Boomer would have us believe these are "monster" shots. They're not. We've been dumbed down. At the old Tiger Stadium, the centerfield wall was 440 feet away from home plate. A ball hit 420-430 in that direction would not result in a home run, and might well be caught for just another out. For that matter, before the old Yankee Stadium was reconfigured, it was a whopping 465 feet to the left-center field wall. Yet there were times when batters hit balls over that wall, notably Mickey Mantle.

Finally, in this year's HRD, Prince Fielder upped the ante. He hit one 448, then 454, then two "bombs" of 476. Unsubstantiated rumors have it that the Boomer had to be given a Valium IV drip so he didn't spontaneously combust.

Most of us think 476 feet is a very long way to hit a baseball these days. But is it?

Back in the 1960's the Detroit Tigers had a chubby first baseman named Norm Cash. Cash hit a few home runs over the rightfield roof in Tiger Stadium that landed on the street outside. They were estimated to have travelled somewhere around 525 feet. In 1971, Reggie Jackson hit a ball in the same Tiger Stadium that crashed into the lights, far above the right-center field roof. How far would that one have gone? Certainly father than any of Cash's blasts. Given current technology, it seems odd that no one has gone back to review that home run, and digitally recreate it using all the tools available to computer geeks these days. It would be interesting to know just far that ball "would" have travelled.

So let's do a reality check. For the most part, today's major league players are more highly conditioned than those of a few decades ago. Their bats have been fine-tuned to their own specific needs far more so than they were in years past. Most people assume even the baseballs themselves have been wound tighter, or "juiced", to fly further. Even in the steroid era, the musclebound monsters that were crashing all those home runs never seemed to hit one further than 500 feet.

Now we have Prince Fielder in the Home Run Derby contest unleashing his mighty coiled up swing, from toes to nose, with all his muscle power in sync making perfect contact for maximum distance to drive a baseball.

And the best he could do is still 50 feet short of what portly Stormin' Norman Cash did a few times back in the 60's? Huh?

Mickey Mantle is generally given credit for the longest home run ever -- some 585 feet. These days the most "Cannonizing, Godzilla, King Kong, T-Rex" blasts don't come within 100 feet of it. Doesn't that seem strange?

On a positive note, I'm grateful Chris Berman wasn't behind the microphone when the Mick hit that particular home run. It's scary to think about what the Boomer might have said or done witnessing such a thing. Remember, Valium wasn't around back then, much less Tasers if he went absolutely berserk.

Guess we'd have had to wait until Walter Cronkite told us about it.

And that's just the way it was.