(#41)
It’s a urban legend in West Jackson. If you saw it, you didn’t believe it and if you didn’t see it, you can’t believe it.
But it happened at the annual Magnolia Academy Baseball Classic in March of 1981.
In a night game between Brandon and Manhattan, the Rebel’s Raymond “Snuffy” Everett hit an epic home run that was still going up when it went over the lights in right field and continued traveling until it bounced off the perimeter fence by John Hopkins Elementary School, a little more than 1/10th of a mile from home plate.
Snuffy was a big, ole country boy who swung from the left side of the plate. He was a character of the game, always antimated and talking to himself, kind of like the Raider’s Tim McMillian talking to his bat at Magnolia.
After graduation he became a kicker for Jackie Sherrill at the University of Pittsburg.
Richard Kelly was working the press box that night and saw the whole thing. He said he had never seen a ball leave the park so fast (and he saw quite a few from the pitcher’s mound) and a baseball reduced to a tiny dot that was still heading up when it went over the lights.
He said the Raider’s Rod Hudson hit one of those dots over the lights in Brandon in 1977. I remember that one. He also compared it to Bobby Picou‘s pinch-hit home run off Warren Guerriero in the 1987 State Championship series at Hinds, a tiny dot over the trees and into the night; no lights in those days. I remember that one, too.
The estimated distance of Snuffy’s Ruthian Bomb? Based on Google Earth, 168.61 meters or 553 feet. Richard and Burney King swear by it. I do, too.
Rick Clarke's Diary of a Mad Baseball Coach 