The longest home run Babe Ruth ever hit did not sail out of Yankee Stadium. According to the men who saw it, it landed in a Tampa fairground in the spring of 1919, and people argued about how far it flew for the rest of their lives.
It was April 4, 1919, an exhibition game at Plant Field during spring training, back when Ruth was still mostly a Boston pitcher on the edge of becoming the greatest slugger the game had ever seen. He got hold of one and launched it over the right field fence, over a racetrack beyond it, and into a plowed field. When they paced it off, the estimates ran well past 500 feet, some said close to 600, a distance that seemed almost impossible for the era.
Tampa claimed the record proudly. The old Tampa Bay Hotel with its silver minarets stood just beyond the outfield, and the crowd of straw hatted fans could hardly believe what they had watched.
Whether it truly flew 587 feet no one can prove, but the legend grew because the man was about to make the impossible look routine.
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