Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Home Runs

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

One of the most dramatic events in sports is the home run. In a single instant, leads can change hands and games can be won or lost.  Yet the home run hasn’t always been what it is today. The rules surrounding home runs have changed, in some cases dramatically. Perhaps the biggest change has been the strategy surrounding home runs. Advanced statistical analysis has changed the approach to home runs so much that the game wouldn’t be recgonizable from someone in the late 19th century.  Learn more about home runs, how they have changed, and how they have influenced the game of baseball on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! Mint Mobile Get your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/eed Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most dramatic events in all of sports is the home run. In a single instant, leads can change hands and games can be won or lost. Yet the home run hasn't always been what it is today. The rules surrounding home runs have changed and in some cases dramatically. Perhaps the biggest change has been in the strategy surrounding home runs. Advanced statistical analysis has changed the approach to home runs so much that the game almost wouldn't be recognizable to someone from the late 19th century. Learn more about home runs, how they've changed and how they've influenced the game of baseball.

On this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison. Then your yoga teacher says that sex traffic children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay. The Great Awakening is coming. Every week on Conspirality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family and wellness gurus down the right-wing cult spiral in a search for salvation.

The origin of this episode dates back to the first list of 100 ideas I had when I launched the podcast back in 2020. One of the ideas came from a book by a baseball researcher named Bill Jenkinson titled The Year Babe Ruth hit 104 home runs. That idea has been sitting at the very top of my list for years. And every time I open up that file, the idea is a year. The idea has been staring me in the face. In the book, Jenkins detailed Babe Ruth's 1921 season, unquestionably one of the greatest seasons in baseball history. He went through every game he played in the entire season, read the write-ups from every

sports writer, and included all the exhibition games against other Major League teams. His argument was that if Babe Ruth were playing a modern schedule, in modern ballparks with modern rules, he would have hit 104 home-reuth. runs in 1921. It was a really interesting read, but for years I struggled to find a way to turn it into an interesting episode. I finally realized that what was interesting was the changes and rules, ballparks, and strategies that had changed the game and approach to home runs. And so with that, in the mid-19th century, when organized baseball was first conified, the home run scarcely existed as a strategic concept. Early rules didn't even guarantee that a ball hit over

the fence would count as a run. In many cases, spectators were expected to retrieve balls hit into the crowd, and the batter could continue running until the ball was returned. What later became known as the ground rule home run was originally just an extension of aggressive base running. Outfields at the time were vast and irregular. Fences were often non-existent, and balls were soft and inconsistently manufactured. Hits that would later be routine flyouts or home runs were instead rolling. rolling balls chased down by outfielders. Moreover, in the very early days, a batter was out if the ball was caught after one bounce, so hitting long-fly balls was often discouraged.

Scoring emphasized getting on base and speed rather than raw power. By the late 19th century, professional leagues such as the National League began to standardize fields and equipment, and the concept of a fair ball clearing the outfield boundary for an automatic run gradually took hold. Even then, home runs remained uncommon. The deadball era, which lasted roughly until 1919, was defined by heavy, loosely wound baseballs that were used for entire games and became soft, misshapen, and darkened with dirt and tobacco juice. Pitchers were permitted to scuff, spit on, and otherwise manipulate the ball, making it difficult to hit with authority. Strategy centered on bunting, hit and run plays, stolen bases.

and manufacturing single runs. League leaders often finish seasons with fewer than 10 home runs. Many home runs of this period were inside the park home runs where the ball didn't clear the outfield wall. They were just glorified triples where the batter literally would run to home. The single season home run record was set in 1884 by Ed Williamson of the Chicago Whitestockings who hit 27 home runs. That record stood for 35.

years. And the record was finally broken in 1919 by a young pitcher slash right fielder for the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth, who hit 29. 1920 saw a radical change in how home runs were perceived. Babe Ruth, now playing for the New York Yankees, demolished his previous single-season home run record from the year before with 54. And this turned the game of baseball on its head. Ruth hit more home runs than every other team in the major leagues, save for the Philadelphia Phillies, who only hit 64. In 1921, Ruth hit 59 home runs in one of the greatest seasons ever, and at the age of 26, he became the career leader in home runs with 162 home runs

at the end of the season. There were several rules surrounding home runs in 1921 that are different from those today. The first is that if you, the ball went over the outfield wall in fair territory, but then curved into foul territory, it was considered a foul ball and not a home run. Second, if a home run ended a game, it was not necessarily recorded as a home run. Only enough bases necessary to drive in the winning run were awarded. And finally, if a ball bounced over the wall, it was considered a home run, unlike today

where it's a ground rule double. The other major differences from today in 1921 were the ballpark dimensions. Many parks built around 1900 had enormous outfields by modern standards. The center field wall could be as far as 460 to almost 500 feet from home plate. For example, League Park in Cleveland originally had 460 feet to dead center field, 385 feet to the left field before its 1910 reconfiguration. Most famously, the New York Polo Grounds, which was home to both the Giants and the Yankees until 1923, had a notch in their center field wall that was 483 feet, the furthest distance of any wall in baseball history.

This was offset by the very close right and left field walls. The right field at the Polo Grounds was 256 feet and the left field was 279 feet. Only five players in baseball history ever hit a home run in dead center field in the polo grounds. Babe Ruth, Luke Easter, Hank Aaron, Lou Brock, and Joe Adcock. The dimensions in early ballparks weren't gimmicks. Early ballparks were literally squeezed into city blocks, rail yards, and odd parcels of land. Before standardized rules, teams accepted radical asymmetry as just being a part of the game. Only in the mid-20th century did Major League Baseball begin enforcing minimum distances,

gradually eliminating the most extreme cases. One debate that has always surrounded home runs is who's hit the longest home run in history. Today, Major League Ballparks use the stat-cast system, which uses radar to measure a ball's velocity and trajectory to estimate its distance. For decades, however, we only had anecdotal stories of massive home runs, and this led to absurd measurements, often based on where a ball came to a rest after rolling. What modern measurements show us is that 500-foot home runs are very, very rare. For example, in 2025, there were zero 500-foot home runs in Major League Baseball.

The longest was 495 feet by Nick Kurtz of the formerly Oakland, Sertes Sacramento, and soon-to-be Las Vegas A's. Prior to the Stadcast era, the best documented moonshot home run was probably hit by Mickey Mantle. He hit a home run estimated at 565 feet that cleared the left field bleachers at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., and landed far outside the stadium. The home run was also aided by a favorable wind. Griffith Stadium's deep dimensions made the estimate plausible, and multiple witnesses corroborated the distance. Some initial estimates placed the distance at 634 feet, but those have been debunked. Reggie Jackson hit a towering home run off the light tower at Detroit's Tiger State. stadium in the 1971 All-Star game. It was estimated at 520 to 530 feet. This is one of the most

visually convincing long home runs ever captured on broadcast video lending credibility to the estimate. Likewise, Babe Ruth probably hit more 500 home runs than anyone in history. One of his longest, and the one recognized by the Guinness Book of World's Records, was hit on July 18, 1921 in Detroit, and it was estimated to have gone 575 feet. The longest verified home run ever hit in any competitive play was hit on June 2, 1987 by Joey Meyer of the AAA Denver Zephyrs. Playing in Mile High Stadium in Denver, his home run was measured at 582 feet. Given the high altitude in Denver, there's less air resistance, which makes it the ideal place to hit record home runs.

Under ideal but still physically plausible conditions, physicists and baseball researchers have converged on a maximum range of about 550 to 600 feet, which is in line with the longest home runs ever hit. A hitter swinging at the extreme upper limit of human capability can produce a bat speed around 80 to 85 miles per hour, yielding a maximum exit velocity of the ball of near 120 to 125 miles per hour. muscle force, reaction time, and injury risk impose hard biological limits. The ball itself also limits distance. At higher speeds, air drag increases dramatically and quickly cancels out the gains from extra velocity.

So if a ball leaves the bat at roughly 125 miles per hour, with a near-optimal launch angle of 30 to 35 degrees, modest backspin to generate lift, warm air, and a light tailwind, Projectile modeling shows a maximum carry distance of just under 600 feet at sea level. So the home run hit by Joey Meyer is about as far as a home run can be hit. The Smarter Everyday YouTube channel created a batting machine that could swing an aluminum bat faster than any human could. Their best hit ball using a machine was 696 feet. One of the biggest changes in baseball over the years has been the shift

towards targeting home runs as a primary strategy. In the dead ball era in the early 20th century, the game was all about batting averages, stealing bases, and trying to earn each run on the base path. Advanced statistics demonstrated that a solo home run is far more valuable than a sequence of singles that requires multiple successful events and risks ending the inning early.

One swing that guarantees a run, regardless of the number of runners on base or defensive alignment, dramatically increases scoring efficiency. Analytics also revealed that slugging percentage and on-base percentage correlate more strongly with run production and wins than batting average or stolen bases. A walk plus a home run produces two runs without putting the ball in play, eliminating any defensive variance. As teams modeled thousands of innings,

it became clear that power-heavy lineups create more runs over a C-E-E-C, reason, even if they strike out more often. Completely eliminating defensive plays makes outcomes more predictable, leading to what's known as the three true outcomes. The three true outcomes in baseball are strikeouts, walks, and home runs. None of these involves defensive plays. Prior to 1920, most years averaged about 0.1 home runs hit per game. In the last several years, it's been common to see

1.2 home runs per game. A 12-fold increase over the course of about 120 years. I'll end with what is perhaps the biggest record in baseball, career home runs. The current Major League record is held by Barry Bonds with 762 home runs. He surpassed the record held by Hank Aaron, who passed Babe Ruth. However, Major League Baseball is not the only league. Sadaharu-oh hit 868 home runs in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball League between 1959 and 1980. His total is fully documented, consistently scored, and universally recognized, making it the highest verified career home run total in baseball history. However, in the Negro Leagues, Josh Gibson is often cited as having hit over 800 or more home runs,

but this figure includes exhibition games, barnstorming games, and incomplete record. While Gibson's power was legendary and very likely comparable to or greater than the Major League Sluggers of his era, his total can't be verified precisely, so it remains an estimate rather than an official count. However, just to bring things full circle, I would like to go back to Bill Jenkinson once more. In his book, he estimated that if Babe Ruth had played with modern rules, a modern schedule, and in ballparks with modern dimensions, he probably would have hit over 1,000 home runs in his career. Almost 300 more than the 714 career home runs he actually hit.

So, will we see even more home runs in the future? Maybe, but probably not, and if so, not a significant amount. As with every revolution in warfare, advances in offense lead to advances in defense. More home run hitters has resulted in harder-throwing pitchers who get rotated in more often. What began as an accident of ballpark geometry is now a deliberately engineered outcome, shaped by decades of rulemaking and the adaptation of advanced statistics. The history of the home run is in many ways the history of baseball's shifting balance between strategy and spectacle.

The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel, The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups,

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