This Is the Longest Home Run of All Time

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 29, 6:04AM EDT · Published Jun 27, 3:00PM EDT

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This Is the Longest Home Run of All Time — © Baseball (CC BY-SA 2.0) by TCtroi

Over the history of baseball there have been several ways the greatest baseball players are measured. Some have to do with hitting average, both over a season and a career. Another is RBIs, both over a career and season. Another is the percentage of times a player gets on base. This measure was made famous by the 2011 movie “Moneyball,” which starred Brad Pitt and the general manager of the Oakland Athletics.

No play in baseball is as exciting or explosive as the home run. The first player to make this a major part of baseball offense was Babe Ruth who is still considered the best player in the history of the game. Ruth hit 714 home runs over the course of 21 years, most of which were with the New York Yankees. He played from 1914 until 1935. He hit 60 home runs in 1927 and 59 in 1921.

Ruth’s career home run record lasted until Hank Aaron broke it in 1974. His single season home run record was broken in 1961 when Roger Maris hit 61. Purests argue that Maris played in a 162 game season, and Ruth in a season in which there were only 154.

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The home run record, both for single seasons and careers, became complicated later. Mark McGuire hit 70 home runs in 1998, but was accused of using performance enhancing steroids. Barry Bonds broke the career record held by Aaron (755) and reached 762. His feat was also clouded by steroid use. By some measures, Aaron’s record still stands.

Another record is for the longest home based on how far it traveled from home plate. This record is also hard to determine. For years, long home runs were measured by eyesight. At another point, tape measures were used. And, some of the longest may be apocryphal–based on the opinion of a very few people. Today, the measurements can be made by lasers, and other advanced technologies.

It is widely accepted that the longest home run record is held by Ruth at 575 feet. It was set in 1921 in Detroit. This fact has been disputed. Some put Ruth’s record at 587 feet at a game in Tampa on April 4, 1921. He hit this homerun in Plant Field, which no longer exists.

Ruth still rules the history of the home run, even if he does not hold the single season or career record. If he had the two longest home runs, set over a century ago, it is another astonishing part of his career.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.