She is way gone: Raising the roof at Dodger Stadium
By Mark Langill
There is a fascination with tape-measure home runs at Dodger Stadium — the third-oldest ballpark in the Major Leagues — because of the rarity of a baseball clearing the pavilion roof.
During the Dodgers’ tenure in Brooklyn, it was common for baseballs to fly out of Ebbets Field, located in the middle of a neighborhood that grew after the ballpark was built in 1913. When the Dodgers played on a makeshift baseball field at the Los Angeles Coliseum from 1958–61, the only famous home runs were the opposite-field drives by Wally Moon, dubbed “Moon Shots,” which landed over the 40-foot high fence in left field just 250 feet away from home plate.
“You don’t see that every night,” Miami Marlins broadcaster Tommy Hutton exclaimed Tuesday night as Giancarlo Stanton rounded the bases following his 475.8-foot home run over the left field roof in the first inning. “Frank Howard … Willie Stargell … Mark McGwire … that’s about it.”
Hutton, a 1964 graduate of nearby South Pasadena High School, knows his Dodger Stadium history. He attended Dodger games as a kid and his father later became a stadium usher during Tommy’s 12-year Major League career with the Dodgers, Phillies, Expos and Blue Jays. Watch the replay of Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run, and the venerable George Hutton stands in the background at his post, behind the wire fencing of the old Dugout Level.
Howard hit the first “mammoth” home run at Dodger Stadium during the 1963 World Series. Howard’s blast in Game 4 off left-hander Whitey Ford was the only home run to land on the Loge Level in the first 40 years of the stadium from 1962–2001.
Stargell, who hit 475 home runs during his Hall of Fame career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is the only player to twice clear the roof at Dodger Stadium. Stargell’s home run off Alan Foster on August 6, 1969 traveled 506 feet and six inches, according to Dodger vice president Arthur “Red” Patterson, who started the tape-measure trend while working with the Yankees and Mickey Mantle in the early 1950s. Stargell’s home run off Andy Messersmith on May 8, 1973 traveled an estimated 470 feet.
Dodger coach McGwire cleared the Left Field Pavilion as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals on May 22, 1999. McGwire’s hit off right-hander Jamie Arnold traveled 483 feet.
The only Dodger to hit a home run on the roof was Mike Piazza on September 21, 1997. Piazza’s third-inning home run off Colorado’s Frank Castillo was hard to see because of the Sunday evening twilight, the only clue was patrons in the back row of the pavilion standing and turning their backs to home plate. The ball landed on the roof and skipped under the video board and rolled into the parking lot. Because the ball was hit during sunset, it took a television replay to confirm that Piazza indeed had joined the select company of Stargell.
Photos: Signs outside the pavilion areas at Dodger Stadium commemorate the “over the roof” home runs by Willie Stargell (1969 and 1973), Mike Piazza (1997) and Mark McGwire (1999).
