Trout Go Boom

Mike Trout murdered a baseball last night. They found it bobbing in some water, like a dead...fish, but it did not drown; it was bludgeoned to death.

ESPN had the distance at 489 feet—the longest in baseball since Giancarlo Stanton sent one 494 feet out of Coor's Field in 2012—but the Royals listed it at only 445 feet. Trout's bomb landed in the fountain in dead centerfield and naturally drew comparison in the telecast to Bo Jackson's monster shot in 1986, which the Royals have at 475 feet and remains the longest home run hit in Kansas City.

The numbers for ESPN and the Royals differ because the Royals measure only to where the ball landed, whereas ESPN's home run tracker calculates where the ball would have landed if the flight of the ball were unimpeded until reaching field level.

Trout and Stanton still have some work to do if they want to hit the longest home run ever, which an expert puts at 575 feet. Bill Jenkinson disputes the legendary Mickey Mantle home run off Chuck Stobbs that left Griffith Stadium and was said to travel 565 feet. Instead, he says the record dates back to 1926 and Babe Ruth, who hit a ball in Detroit that travelled 575 feet from home plate.