On Saturday afternoon, the Athletics beat the Red Sox, 8-3. It was the A's third straight win and the Red Sox third straight loss. The real story of the game, however, was A's fringe prospect Chad Pinder's 483-foot home run (according to ESPN). If that measurement is accurate (Statcast had it at 460), it would be the longest home run of 2017 and the longest homer by an A's player since ESPN started tracking them in 2009.
The area Pinder hit the ball to—apparently called the plaza reserve—is rarely touched by home run balls. That area is part of "Mount Davis," a section of 20,000 seats that was added in an effort to bring an NFL team to Oakland in 1996. In fact, the plaza reserve has only been hit four times (Jarrett Parker of the Giants just barely did it in 2015).
Despite my best efforts, I could not find video footage of McGwire or Walker's home run. If you can, please send them to me. Until then, I'll have to take the A's word on this one. According to the internet, these are the two longest home runs from Walker and McGwire's careers.
Career home runs:
- Mark McGwire: 583
- Larry Walker: 383
- Chad Pinder: 5
Baseball is here! And more importantly, that means the over/under game is back. It seems as though everyone is an expert this time of year. Somehow we convince ourselves that we are better at predicting baseball outcomes than everyone else. Well, AFITB is putting that to the test for the third year in a row. Think you know more about baseball than us? You probably do. But go ahead and prove it anyway.