Jayson Werth's home run in Sunday's 12-0 spring training win over the New York Mets was variously described as "monster" and "mammoth." Sadly, the game wasn't televised so we can't judge for ourselves. But fortunately, the Washington Post's Thomas Boswell, the dean of Washington's baseball writers, was able to use his dogged journalistic instincts to track down a precise measurement of Werth's tater.
Adam Kilgore has the complete play-by-play at Nationals Journal, but this part stuck out to us.
The bartender had told Boz the ball had hit "right below the ruffle" on the tree, beneath the palms. Boz estimated that to be 12 feet up the tree.
At this point, Boz employed the "3-4-5 triangle rule we all learned in school," he said. If the ball had hit 12 feet up the tree, he figured, the ball would have carried another nine feet had the tree not been there. Just to be sure, he put the extra distance at 9 to 12 feet.
Boswell's final, best estimate puts the home run distance at 492 feet. We would quibble with the math, but we haven't thought seriously about the Pythagorean Theorem since our sophomore year of high school. Besides, anyone who gets to spend a morning checking the distance of spring training home runs is doing something right with his life.
May we propose that Inspector Boswell next investigate Andray Blatche's fitness routine?