Griffith Stadium - Notable Sluggers

Notable Sluggers

The distant fences were no problem for sluggers like Josh Gibson, Mickey Mantle and the Senators' own youngster Harmon Killebrew. There have only been three reported instances of a player hitting a home run over the left field bleachers: once by Mantle and twice by Gibson. Babe Ruth hit near-500 foot drives over the center and right-center walls on consecutive days in May 1921.

In May 1949, Cleveland Indians outfielder Larry Doby smacked the then-longest home run ever hit at the stadium over the right-center field wall, and onto a rooftop well outside the ballpark. The shot was reported to have traveled over 500 feet, and Doby called it "the longest homer I've ever hit."

On April 17, 1953, Mantle hit one off Chuck Stobbs that was so impressive that someone tried to determine its flight with some precision, thus popularizing the term "Tape Measure Home Run." It was alleged to be 565 feet, although it bounced off the top of the back wall of the bleachers, adding some distance to its flight path.

Clark Griffith once said that Josh Gibson hit more home runs into Griffith Stadium's distant left field bleachers than the entire American League. Aside from some championship seasons in the early 1920s and 1930s, the Senators teams that played at Griffith Stadium were legendarily bad. The hapless Washington team became the butt of a well-known Vaudeville joke, "First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League," a twist on the famous Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee eulogy of George Washington: "First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen." (A similar phrasing was once used for the St. Louis Browns: "First in shoes, first in booze, and last in the American League.")

Only one Washington, DC public high school baseball player ever hit a home run over the 30-foot high "green monster-like" right field wall at Griffith Stadium - Bill Harrison of Coolidge High School in 1952.

The stadium was still called Griffith Stadium in 1961, even though team owner Calvin Griffith had moved the original Senators club to the "Twin Cities" area of Minneapolis-St. Paul (becoming the Minnesota Twins), to be replaced in Washington by a new expansion team, also called the Senators (now the Texas Rangers).