Wind-milling that sledgehammer in the on-deck circle, Willie Stargell, listed at 6'2", 190 lbs in his early years, looms so much larger in our memories.** While he wasn't the biggest man in baseball, he might have been the most powerful.
His feats of strength were legendary:
• He was the first player to hit a ball completely out of Dodger Stadium (with Mark McGwire, Mike Piazza and Giancarlo Stanton the only other players to replicate the feat) – and he did it twice.
• The Pirates called Three Rivers Stadium home for 30 years. In that time, six home runs made the right field upper deck. Stargell launched four of them.
• In the 61-year history of Forbes Field, 18 baseballs cleared the roof. Stargell hit seven of them. No one else had more than one.
• He hit the longest home run ever recorded at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia – nothing too unusual about that, as Stargell owned distance records all over the league. What is unusual is the fact that the Phillies commemorated the blast by marking the landing spot.
Yep. Mike Schmidt’s team commemorated a visiting player’s home run.
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