May 22, 1963: Mickey Mantle Hits the Yankee Stadium Façade

This picture is from the game in question,

but from Mantle's previous at-bat.

May 22, 1963: The New York Yankees beat the Kansas City Athletics, 8-7 at Yankee Stadium. The Bronx Bombers scored 7 runs in the bottom of the 2nd inning, oddly without a home run. Bill Stafford took a shutout into the top of the 8th, then fell apart: Between them, Stafford, Marshall Bridges and Ralph Terry allowed 6 runs. Terry gave up a home run to future Met Ed Charles in the 9th.

Mickey Mantle led off the bottom of the 11th against Bill Fischer. Batting lefthanded, He hit a rocket high into the night in right field. No player had ever hit a fair ball completely out of Yankee Stadium. Yogi Berra jumped out of his seat, and, thinking this one was going out, yelled, "My God, that's it!"

It wasn't "it." But it was close. The ball smashed into the frieze atop the roof, maybe 6 inches from the top, and rebounded all the way back to the infield. The spot it hit was 374 feet from home plate, and 108 feet off field level. Somebody suggested at the time that, had there been no obstruction, it would have gone 620 feet.

Mantle later called it the hardest ball he ever hit, and it was the closest anybody ever came to hitting a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium. More importantly, it won the game, making a winning pitcher out of Steve Hamilton.

Mantle had hit the frieze, usually incorrectly called "the façade," twice before, in 1956, both times to right field. He and Frank Howard had both done that in left field, batting righthanded.

A legend states that Josh Gibson, batting righthanded, hit a fair ball all the way out of Yankee Stadium during a Negro League game, around 1934 or so, but this has never been proven. Buck O'Neil once said he'd heard the story from Buck Leonard, adding, "And Buck don't lie." But Leonard himself once said, "I didn't see the one he is supposed to have hit out of Yankee Stadium."

Gibson was called "the Black Babe Ruth." Negro League fans called Ruth "the White Josh Gibson." It is possible that Ruth hit one all the way out of Yankee Stadium before the triple decks were extended around the right field pole in the 1936-37 off-season, 2 years after he left the team. After all, it's easier to clear one level of bleachers than three levels of grandstands. If he did, it's never been reported.

On a weeknight in The Bronx, only 10,312 paying customers saw Mantle come closer than anybody did to hitting one all the way out.

*

May 22, 1963 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that AC Milan, the Champions of Italian soccer, defeated the Portuguese Champions, Benfica, to win the European Cup, popularizing the tactic known as "Catenaccio." I have a separate entry for this event.

These other baseball games were played:

* The New York Mets lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-3 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Duke Snider hit a home run for the Mets against his former team. But Tommy Davis and Frank Howard hit home runs in support of Don Drysdale.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Harmon Killebrew went 1-for-5. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-4.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 2-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Steve Barber, proving that his arm was neither sore nor a little stiff (Ball Four reference), outpitched Jim Bunning. The Orioles' Brooks Robinson and the Tigers' Al Kaline, in his hometown, each went 1-for-3.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Washington Senators, 9-3 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (D.C. Stadium would be renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.)

* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Cleveland Indians, 7-6 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Angels led 6-0 going into the bottom of the 4th inning, and blew it. But in the top of the 11th inning, Gary Bell loaded the bases, and forced in the winning run by hitting Lee Thomas with a pitch. (Bell would later to be Barber's teammate on the 1969 Seattle Pilots, and a featured figure in Ball Four, since he roomed with the book's author, Jim Bouton.)

* The Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-6 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Stan Musial, in his final season, went 3-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBI. Ernie Banks only appeared as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base. Lou Brock went 2-for-5 with a walk -- for the Cubs, as that epic trade had not yet been made. Ken Aspromonte singled Brock home with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Houston Colt .45s, 4-3 at Colt Stadium in Houston. The Colts took a 3-0 lead into the top of the 9th, and blew it, capped by a pinch-hit 2-RBI single by Roberto Clemente. The Colts became the Houston Astros in 1965.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.

* And the Milwaukee Braves and the Cincinnati Reds were postponed at Milwaukee County Stadium -- according to Baseball-Reference.com, due to cold weather. In late May. Anyway, it was rescheduled for July 29. The Braves won, 8-2. Warren Spahn went the distance for the win. Hank Aaron went 3-for-5 with a home run and 4 RBIs -- just another day at the office. Home runs were also hit by the Braves' Lee Maye (not to be confused with future Reds and Orioles star Lee May), and by the Reds' Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson.