by Cary Osborne
Was it?
Fans pointed and jaws dropped. Teammates were in awe.
Shohei Ohtani hit a baseball that traveled 473 feet in the fifth inning on Sunday in the Dodgers’ 9–6 win against the Red Sox at Dodger Stadium. As it approached the roof in right-center field, it was lost to many who were at the ballpark. Even Ohtani.
“I was looking, but I couldn’t see where it went,” he said.
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The velocity was so rapid that it was hard to determine if it was the seventh home run hit out of Dodger Stadium in the history of the 63-season history ballpark.
Fans in the area confirmed it wasn’t hit out of Dodger Stadium.
The group sitting below the hanging Daiso sign in right-center field said the baseball zoomed through the slight opening between the sign and the roof.
Dodger players in the dugout were in awe.
Ohtani joked: “Everybody was like kind of semi-impressed.”
They were very impressed.
“We’re all just kind of shocked looking at that,” said starting pitcher James Paxton, who benefited from the Ohtani homer. “Like he’s superhuman. It’s pretty fun to watch.”
Austin Barnes hit his first home run of the year in the previous at-bat. He says he likes to watch Ohtani at-bats, but couldn’t because he was trying to get ready for the next inning. He heard a sound, saw the ball lift, heard screaming and the ball disappear.
“He’s a freak,” Barnes said.
The Dodgers hit a season-high six homers on the day. Included in that was Gavin Lux’s second in consecutive games. He, like the others, was incredulous at his teammate’s blast.
“It sounded like a shotgun coming off of his bat,” Lux said.
Ohtani’s homer, his 30th of the season, had a 116.7-mph exit velocity.
The velocity gave the ball the momentum to keep going after it cleared the sign. It took a bounce and left the Right Field Pavilion, landing in the walkway in Centerfield Plaza.
“Gosh, man, he just never ceases to amaze,” said manager Dave Roberts. “You just look at how far that ball went and how hot it came off the bat. It’s just hard to fathom somebody hitting the baseball like that. He did say he got all of it. That’s where people just don’t go. Just really impressive. Gosh, I mean, he just does things it seems like every night that people just can’t do.”
It is the second-longest home run hit at Dodger Stadium in the Statcast Era behind Giancarlo Stanton’s 475-foot homer on May 12, 2015. That one left the building.
So did these:
· Willie Stargell (Aug. 5, 1969) — 506 feet, 6 inches
· Willie Stargell (May 8, 1973) — 470 feet
· Mike Piazza (Sept. 21, 1997) — 478 feet
· Mark McGwire (May 22, 2015) — 475 feet
· Fernando Tatis Jr. (Sept. 20, 2021) — 467 feet
It didn’t qualify as an out-of-the-stadium home run like the others. But there’s time.
“I think I’m going to have a lot more opportunities to do so,” he said.
Shohei Ohtani’s shot heard ’round the baseball world was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.