Remember watching this in amazement, with friends, before a Cardinals game in 1969…
Awesome fungo competition.
Though generally considered all business on the field, Hoerner was a prankster outside the lines. In an airport one day, he surprised his teammates waiting in the baggage claim area by sliding out the luggage chute. He hit only .102, but a couple of stunts involved a bat. His favorite trick was to startle a teammate by sneaking behind him and slamming a bat against a folding chair. He made history of sorts by doing what designers claimed was impossible — hitting the Astrodome roof with a batted ball. He did it several times. During pre-game warm-ups he would toss up a ball and slug it with a fungo bat. “Most of his pregame shots have hit the sloping area between home plate and the pitcher’s mound, about 175 feet up,” Sports Illustrated noted, “but some of them have attained the dome’s 208-foot zenith.” Before a game in Los Angeles, Hoerner and some teammates had a little competition to startle some patrons in a Dodgers Stadium skybox. The contest involved tossing a baseball against the supposedly “unbreakable” skybox window. Hoerner’s toss smashed a pane.
Society for American Baseball Research
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