Speaking of Fenway Park’s infamous red seat in the bleachers, Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz Wonders If Ted Williams’ blast is a true story.
Legend has it that Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams pounded a home run so far into the right-field bleachers at historic Fenway Park that they painted the seat red to show off his prowess.
Current Red Sox hero David Ortiz says, in words we can use in a family blog, that the story is bogus. It cannot be done. Ortiz, a man known for his prodigious power, is right if the home run happened today.
The home run in question came on June 9, 1946. In the first inning of a doubleheader nightcap against the Detroit Tigers, Williams slammed an epic two-run homer off Fred Hutchinson to give the BoSox a 2-0 lead. The ball allegedly landed 502 feet from home plate, presumably sending the 32,800 assembled into a frenzy.
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The Fenway Williams played at, to the one Ortiz enjoys now, are essentially two different ballparks. What gets lost about the park is Fenway was a multi-purpose stadium. Not like a 70s-style cookie-cutter, but a neighborhood block built to host baseball and football.
After Williams rookie season in 1939, the moved he bullpens into right-center, cutting the distance down to 380 in the power alley. For the pull-hitting Williams, baseballs died into waiting gloves, and the Sox tried to correct it. The drop off in dimensions from right-center at Fenway is pronounced and sharp. You really have to sting one to find the seats.
Imagine Fenway with no lights, no seats or ads on the roof and no huge press box. For years, the short Green Monster doomed left-handed pitchers to the point the New York Yankees would try to avoid Whitey Ford pitching in Boston and why the Sox could never develop a consistent lefty. Right field was and is different. It is huge, built for a football end zone.
On this particular Sunday, ESPN says the weather was 76 degrees with a rare 21 mph to right. That makes the wind unusual as it is blowing towards the Atlantic Ocean and not off of it. On that day, right field was an inviting target, not left.
Today, the enclosed press box and false second deck on Fenway would make what ESPN now estimates is a 530-foot bomb impossible. The ball would never hit that gale toward the ocean to go that far. Ortiz is right. But that was not 1946 Fenway.
Once the ball launched off Williams bat into the Boston afternoon, there was nothing the stadium could do to stop it. Although we have no film or audio record of the blast, just the Baseball-Reference notation that George Metkovich scored, it is possible Williams could have smashed one that far.
What younger fans cannot understand is just how different the park plays now since the press box was rebuilt and enclosed in 1987. Now a multi-story structure with luxury boxes, any west wind is blunted and will swirl instead of launching balls into the streets of Boston. Add the Prudential and John Hancock Towers downtown and those ocean breezes are muted.
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Chances are Ortiz is right. Smashing one 530 feet 37 rows above the bullpens is nearly unthinkable. Yet, Fenway plays so differently now. Given the right breeze, it could be done then. It is too bad there is no film record of it.