Marco’s Baseball Blog-O-Roonie 2021: CANNONS!
Rocky Colavito was a power hitting outfielder for the Cleveland Indigenous North Americans and the Detroit Large Striped Felines from the mid 50’s until the late 60’s.
Led the league in homers once, rbi’s once, slugging once...a real steady producer and a huge hit with the fans. Women thought his unibrow was a real turn on and they loved it when he’d go through a kind of yoga-calisthenic stretching procedure before every at bat. It was always an “Oh! Rocky!” Picture Show kind of moment. In fact, when the Cleveland club traded Rocky to Detroit for batting champion Harvey Kuenn it was a scandal. Superstitious fans (in other words all of them) say this rotten trade put a curse on the team which is still going strong today.
One thing the Rock had was an incredible throwing arm. Ralph Kiner, the old Pittsburgh slugger who worked in the Cleveland organization after his playing days, said Colavito had the best arm in baseball...the best arm he’d ever seen. Ralph himself was a Hall of Fame slugger and was around the game for awhile and saw a lot of players. Many other players are quoted as agreeing that Rocky had the most powerful arm in baseball. Some said Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Carl Furillo got rid of their throws quicker, but nobody could match the power of Colavito.
Back in 1956, the year Colavito was called up to the big league club, he was playing for San Diego in the Pacific Coast League and some of his teammates got him into some promotional pre-game stunt to see if Rock could break the record for longest throw. The record at that time was 434 feet by an unknown minor league Hearty name of Don Grate. They set up the throw starting in the right field corner throwing to the left field foul pole which was a certain 460 feet away, but the wind was bad that night and Rocky moved to home plate and decided to throw to center with a cross wind. He threw a couple of long warm ups and then unloaded four straight heaves from home plate over the 420 mark at the center field fence. One throw landed on top of the batting cage and couldn’t be accurately measured. It was the longest though. The best throw that they could measure with certainty went 436 feet...a new record by 2 feet.
That may be the longest distance anybody has ever thrown a baseball, considering conditions..
The history of the long throw record is one of those fascinating by-products of baseball, like Bob Feller measuring the speed of his fastball against a motor cycle going 98 mph. Has nothing to do with an actual game, but it’s the kind of thing that it’s just fun to know.
The original long throw record was set by a member of the Cincinnati Redlegs (baseball’s FIRST professional team) in 1868. John Hatfield was his name and he threw a ball 396 feet. By 1898 somebody noticed that Honus Wagner...then playing third for Louisville after giving up his career as a coal miner...had an awfully strong arm. Honus threw one they measured at 407 feet. Sheldon Lejeune (he tried to rename himself “Larry” but it never took) upped it to 426 feet in 1910 but they said it was definitely wind aided. In 1952 Hugh McMullen increased the record by one foot in the dry air of Arizona for a recorded distance of 427 and then came Don Grate in Chattanooga with 434. (Legit but at altitude and inland. Colavito was throwing at sea level in the humid sea breezes of San Diego.) The last time the record was broken was when Glen Gorbous tried it in 1958. On a very hot night in Omaha at over 1000 feet elevation, Glen uncorked one 445 feet with a long running start. This is now the official record, but considering the conditions, many people think Colavito’s was the more impressive throw.
(You can read nice tidbits about these players and their arms at …
“The J.G. Preston Experience” website.)
Mike Riley has written an excellent in depth examination of the subject and has made a conclusion primarily based on assist statistics and frequency of runners trying to take extra bases on various candidates. He doesn’t trust the eyeball test or folk stories. I won’t spoil the fun by blurting out who he thinks the best arm belongs to, but I must point out that assists are not a hard fact of statistics. Like a lot of fielding stats, they can be misleading.
The all time leader in outfield assists is Tris Speaker with 449. Tris was the first superstar centerfielder and an awesome Hall of Famer who played 22 years, from 1907 until 1928. That can lead to a lot of opportunity. But Tris is famous for playing an extremely close in “rover” type of center field. This was back in the dead ball era and not many hitters could hit it over him. So he controlled base runners and threw guys out at second on singles that other outfielders couldn’t. These days the outfielders have to stay back. Tris had over 30 assists in a season 7 times...all in his early days with the Boston Red Sox. (see “park effects” coming up)
Other effects on assist totals are ballpark configuration. How many hitters slam a line drive off the Green Monster in Boston and just assume they hit a double, only to Die the Death on a throw to second...not on a great throw from a Tris Speaker but by Kiki Hernandez or some other ordinary thrower who just got a good bounce and padded his assist total?
Or pitching staff proclivities? What if you play on a team with a staff of split finger/sinker types who rack up ground balls? Quite a few less outfield assist opportunities? How about a bunch of strike out artists like we have today? And then there’s a team full of fly ball pitchers where the outfielders are gunning down base runners because they have more opportunities to field balls hit to them.
With a stat like assists, where 15 can lead the league, a few weird conditions can make a huge difference.
By far the hardest thing to evaluate is the fact that once a player gets a reputation as a dangerous arm, base runners stop trying for the extra base and base coaches are reluctant to send them. So does the great arm guy get any statistical credit? Not as far as assist totals go...but esoteric things like how many runners on second tried to take third on a fly ball to deep right...that’s a stat, but it depends on the runners on base and the judgement of the base coach as to how much credit the player with the shut down arm gets.
Just my opinion, but I think that once a player gets credit for having a “cannon”...most of his assists come from either mistakes or truly awe inspiring greatness. Clemente had high assist totals year after year when everybody knew you just didn’t take a chance running on him. So the only assists Clemente was getting at the peak of his career were when a fast runner was sure he could get to third on that double to the gap and...surprise! Or a runner on third was sent home on a single to right just because the pitcher’s spot was next in the line up and the third base coach had to take a chance that Roberto’s throw would be up the line just this once.
My point is that other people’s opinions and experience shape statistics. High, steady assist totals surely mean that the players like Furillo, Mays, Clemente, Parker, Evans, Barfield, Ichiro and Bo Jackson have guns. It is an indicator, but not a proof that one is better than another. The greatest arm in the world would be some guy that was so scary that he would never have an assist because absolutely nobody would ever run on him. Assist total...zero.
And it’s not stats that decides who has the best arm, but word of mouth on the league “telegraph” and the wisdom and experience of the best judges of baseball talent we have...the other players, managers and coaches of the game. These guys have seen more games than anybody and they have seen players perform. I, for one, will pay attention to their opinions.
We also have the miracle of film, video and digital playback nowadays. Good luck trying to find a film of Tris Speaker throwing a strike from centerfield, but you can see Bo Jackson throwing out Harold Reynolds from the left centerfield fence to home plate when Harold was stealing on the pitch and he’s one of the fastest men in baseball and he’s passing second at full speed while Bo was still trying to find the handle.…
And then Bo lets it rip...all the way from the fence in the air...no hop...yer out Sonny!
Or Jose Guillen of Pittsburgh butchering a shot off the wall in right center, scrambling toward the infield fifteen feet to pick up the caromed baseball and like a javelin thrower, getting everything behind the throw...all the way to third base in the air for the out! (It’s called “the mutant throw”.)
Or Bo Jackson again, starting in almost the same spot on the field in right center, corraling a gapper and with absolutely no run up just arm firing the ball to kill the runner trying for second.
Clemente in the 1971 series, which Roberto owned, fielding a ball in the extreme right field corner and throwing a strike to third base to get the runner. (Well, he was actually called safe but the umpire blew the call!)
There’s a reason they call him “El Howitzer”.
Jesse Barfield from the track in right center...don’t even think about it.
Rick Ankiel getting two Mariners at third in the same game on impossible throws from centerfield.
And one more from a player that is all but forgotten...Ellis Valentine of the Montreal Expos. He only had one gold glove year. 1978 when he led the league with 24 assists. But when other players were asked to rank the great arms in the game...most of them started with Ellis. They put him in a special category all his own before talking about the other gunners.
That throw he makes against the Reds on a fast runner from second. A smash down the first base line that Valentine traps at the base of the wall, turns and with no momentum, fires a head high laser beam to catcher Gary Carter in the air to get Davey Concepcion by ten feet. No arc to that throw, just power and line...a perfect, perfect throw.
Let Gary tell it… starts at 1:25 if you feel like pasting this short youtube clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQwfvNtAFyk
So who is the Big Daddy of outfield arms? My firm belief is that this will never be completely resolved because of the number of variables. Conditions change. It’s probably from this group though…
Roberto Clemente/ Jesse Barfield/ Ellis Valentine/ Bo Jackson...
...or Rocky Colavito!
Happy Holidays!
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