Edes: 70 years later, Ted Williams’ red-seat homer still awes
From SABR member Gordon Edes at MLBlogs.com on June 28, 2016:
Seventy years to the month later, the reaction is the same: Awe. Skepticism. Disbelief.
“Ted Williams hit one that far? No way!’’
There is no disputing the prescience of Gene Mack, the cartoonist for the Boston Daily Globe, whose sketch on June 10, 1946, of a ball landing deep in the right-field bleachers of Fenway Park was accompanied by this caption:
“Ted hit one of those homers they’ll be pointing out the spot on for years to come.’’
It is now known as the “red seat” home run, the painted marker by which the Red Sox elected to commemorate what is regarded as the longest home run ever struck in Red Sox history. It stands out in a sea of green: Sec. 42, Row 37, Seat 21, designating the spot where Joseph A. Boucher, a construction engineer from Albany, N.Y, who had come to Boston to work during the war, was sitting when Ted Williams hit a ball that popped a hole in the crown of the straw hat Boucher was wearing.
Boucher’s picture appears on the front page of the Globe the next day, his finger poking through the hole in his hat. “How far away must one sit to be safe in this park?’’ Boucher is quoted as saying by the Globe’s Harold Kaese.
Boucher said he didn’t bother to retrieve the ball. “They say it bounced a dozen rows higher,’’ he said, “but after it hit my head I was no longer interested.’’
The Red Sox have recorded the home run’s distance as 502 feet.
Read the full article here: https://gordonedes.com/2016/06/28/70-years-later-red-seat-hr-still-awes/
Originally published: June 29, 2016. Last Updated: June 29, 2016.