This Day In Baseball - The Daily Rewind

March 17, 1918: A young Babe Ruth, still primarily a pitcher, slugs a pair of home runs during a spring training game at Whittington Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The second long ball is thought to be the first 500-plus foot blast in baseball history. The Herculean shot—hit off Brooklyn Robins hurler Norman Plitt—soared far over the fence in deep right-center, coming to rest in the middle of an inhabited pond at the Arkansas Alligator Farm. The Boston Globe reported that "the intrusion" caused quite a "commotion among the Gators.” The epic drive was later measured at 573 feet—the distance from home plate to the pond's center.Amazingly, Ruth replicated the feat a week later in another spring exhibition versus Brooklyn. In its coverage of the proceedings, The Boston Post wrote: "Before the echo of the crash had died away the horsehide had dropped somewhere in the vicinity of South Hot Springs. . . . The sphere cleared the fence [400 feet away] by about 200 feet and dropped in the pond beside the Alligator Fa