This Judge anecdote is bonkers

[bmags]

https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/07/13/trade-rum...-home-runs-cubs

 

Here’s a story for you to add to the legend that is Judge. Back when the engineers from Walter P. Moore were designing the retractable roof of Marlins Park, they set out to determine how high the roof would have to be so as not to interfere with balls in play. They studied the air density and temperatures of Miami and plugged those variables into equations from NASA. Then they wrote an algorithm “to generate a volumetric approximation of all the possible batted ball flight paths” and then applied it to their Building Information Modeling to determine the final geometry of the roof structure.

 

The engineers finally arrived at a height of 210 feet above the ground at its apex (above second base) to make sure no batted ball hit the roof. It tapered to a low of 128 feet above the ground in deep right-centerfield.

 

The Marlins still were required, however, to submit to MLB a ground rule on how to treat a batted ball that might hit the roof. It was thought of as a formality, seeing how they had hired experts to make sure the roof couldn’t be hit.

 

So they came up with this rule: Any ball that hit the roof would be treated as a live fly ball, not a home run. If it landed in foul territory it would be a foul ball. If it landed in fair territory it would be a live ball, with the batter-runner advancing at his own risk. If a fielder caught the carom off the roof, the batter would be out.

 

Crazy, right? Well, nobody gave it a second thought because the idea of a ball hitting the roof was thought to be impossible. Until Monday, nobody did hit the roof—not in a game, not in batting practice.

 

Then Judge showed up and hit the roof with a Home Run Derby blast. The Marlins estimated that it cleared one girder and smacked against another at a height off the ground of about 170 feet in deep left-centerfield. Think about that: about 17 stories high after traveling about 300 feet.

 

Teams officials suddenly had to dust off the obscure ground rule that had never been used before and had largely been forgotten. The blast was determined not to be a home run, making it the most massive fair ball ever struck that was not a home run.

 

The moral of the story is this: You can bring together the brainpower of the world’s smartest building engineers, combine it with every bit of local atmospheric data, add to it the computational power of NASA, and you still can’t Judge-proof a ballpark.

 

Reminds me of Bo Jackson schoolyard legend type stuff

[daa84]

yeah but the baseballs aren't juiced or anything

[knightni]

I wonder where it would have landed if the roof had been open.

[Dick Allen]

yeah but the baseballs aren't juiced or anything

They admittedly use juiced balls in the HR derby. But he is using his own power. It isn't like they are throw 95 to him.

Edited July 18, 2017 by Dick Allen