Josh Gibson really, may have, hit a ball 600 feet in Puerto Rico

Batboy Freddie Thon Jr. peered out of the dugout at Sixto Escobar Stadium. And for this particular at-bat, he peered a little harder.

His dad, Fred Sr., was pitching for the San Juan Senadores. A franchise that would eventually end up being one of the most storied in Puerto Rican professional baseball history.

The right-hander wiped the sweat from his forehead, likely forming under the hot Caribbean sun. But also, maybe understandably, it was his body's reaction to who was now standing in the batter's box.

Staring back at him, it was The King of Sluggers. The Black Babe Ruth. The Pride of Buena Vista, Georgia. Josh Gibson.

The 6-foot-1, 220-pound mountain of a man hovered over the plate, nearly bursting through his Santurce Cangrejeros jersey. It's a Puerto Rican League team, some say later, made famous by Roberto Clemente. But if you look at Gibson's numbers from his years on the island, it should've -- he should've -- been famous already.

That, of course, wasn't something that bothered Gibson at the moment. The only thing that bothered Gibson was how hard and how far he could hit the next strike.

He hoisted his hands back, Fred Thon Sr. delivered the pitch, Freddie Jr.'s eyes widened just off the field and Gibson hit one straight into that sweltering Puerto Rican sun.

The ball sailed over the gigantic pine trees in front of the cement fence in left-center field, over that cement fence near the 425-mark, and flew some more until it disappeared from sight.

"I asked Freddie, I said, 'Freddie, what happened when your father came back to the dugout?'" Jorge Delgado, Puerto Rican baseball's official historian, told me in a Zoom. "He said, 'Everybody kept quiet. No one had seen something like that. They were all shocked.'"

Gibson hit well in a lot of places. Like, pretty much anywhere he was allowed to play.

He compiled a .373 lifetime average during his 14-year Negro League career. He batted close to .400 in multiple seasons in Mexico and Cuba. Some reports have him hitting 800 to 1,000 homers during his 17 years of baseball.

"It was like a stick of dynamite going off," famed Negro League storyteller Buck O'Neil once said of Gibson making contact.

Like with any power hitter, Black or white during that era, there are -- of course -- stories of mythical blasts.

A 580-foot long ball clear out of Yankee Stadium. A 600-foot shot off a post office building in New Jersey. A homer he hit in Pittsburgh that landed in Philadelphia the next day for an out.

The tale of Gibson's mammoth homer has been retold for decades, and Delgado chronicled the historic homer on his "Negro Leaguers in Puerto Rico" site.

"Gibson was selected as one of the best 75 players in the league," Delgado told me. "He was inducted in the first class of our Hall of Fame in 1991."

There have been all-time great players that have come through the Puerto Rican professional baseball league -- from Clemente to Willie Mays (who was once on the same team as Clemente), to Orlando Cepeda and Satchel Paige. But not many come close to the damage Gibson did during his multiple series with multiple teams on the island and his three years of full-time play during the winter months with Santurce.

The catcher hit .400 with the Estrellas de Ramirez team and .643 with Concordia from 1933-34 during trips to the island. He clubbed .607 with the Brooklyn Eagles in 1936-37.

In his debut year with Santurce during the 1939-40 season, in 150 at-bats, Gibson hit .380 with six homers and 28 RBIs. His six dingers led the league. The warm climate and reception seemed to begat a wonderful relationship between the slugger and baseball-hungry fans who came to see him. A much different experience from the Jim Crow discrimination that ran rampant in the United States.

From William Brashler's Josh Gibson: A Life in the Negro Leagues:

*"Nothing in his career gave more pleasure, for in Puerto Rico he was idolized by fans, recognized, and surrounded in the streets, and generally regarded as a celebrity wherever he went on the lush, comfortable island."*

But his 1941-42 campaign with Santurce would top any other he, or maybe any other player had in P.R. It's why he's in the Puerto Rico Pro Baseball Hall of Fame. It's probably, partly, why he's in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Coming off a tour in Mexico where he was second in the league in homers, Gibson came back for his second stop with Santurce. And he didn't stop hitting the ball hard for 123 straight at-bats. The 30-year-old batted an unreal .480 (59 hits) -- beating out second-place finisher Willard Brown by 71 points. He slugged at a .959 mark with 43 RBIs and 37 runs. Most notably, he hit a then-record 13 homers, more than the second- and third-place homer leaders combined. That's a home run every nine at-bats.

Over a full MLB season, that would be the best homer-per-at-bat rate recorded.

And one of those 13 dingers was, purportedly, the longest Delgado has ever heard of in Puerto Rican baseball history.

"Sixto Escobar Stadium was a huge park," Delgado told me. "There was a cement fence, and before the cement fence, there was a line of pine trees. Those pine trees were very high."

The pines were apparently planted in 1932, so by 1941, they could've been upwards of 15-20 feet tall.

Gibson hit this homer over the trees, which wasn't done very often. Freddie Thon Jr. definitely notes that in his recollection, saying "the ball went over the pine trees" to left-center. You can see in the dimensions graph below that left-center would likely be over 400 feet, with the ball still at a height of maybe 15 feet or more. It still had room to travel.

It also may have had the backing of a favorable ocean breeze, sending it even farther: Players sometimes spoke of winds from behind home plate at Escambron Beach carrying homers that flew high enough in the sky.

Additionally, there are multiple instances of Gibson hitting a line of trees that ringed the outside of the ballpark even a greater distance away. Again, from Gibson: A Life in the Negro Leagues:

*"San Juan's Sixto Escobar Stadium had an outfield wall ringed by trees growing about 50 feet back. Josh often nailed drives that disappeared into the trees, distances close to 500 feet away in the heavy tropical air. After each one, a stadium worker was sent to climb the high branches to hang a glittering marker on where each fly ball was last seen."*

With these factors in mind -- combined with Freddie Jr. as an on-site witness and a prime Gibson generational power at maybe his mightiest -- estimates put the 1941 homer at an astounding 618 feet.

Of course, even with all that help, it's hard to imagine Gibson hitting a ball that far. But even if it wasn't 618 feet or 600, Delgardo stresses it had to be pretty close. He also reminds me that there was a certain Major Leaguer who was routinely known for his long, nearly 600-foot blasts. Gibson was bigger, and perhaps even stronger.

"I don't know, you know, one of the strongest batters was Mickey Mantle, right?" Delgado said. "How many 600-foot homers did Mantle hit? If Mickey Mantle did it, then Josh did it."