Report: Aaron Judge Hitting Roof At Marlins Park Defied NASA Equations
Ryan Mayer
Yankees fans have gotten used to the unique pleasure of watching outfielder Aaron Judge send baseballs into the stratosphere over the first half of the season. Yet, even they were impressed by what he was able to do in the Home Run Derby on Monday night.
One particular swing got plenty of notice, after Judge hit a ball so high that it ended up striking the Marlins' retractable roof and falling into the field of play. It wasn't ruled a home run, but it didn't matter, as Judge went on to hit enough in the bonus time to advance past the Marlins' Justin Bour in the first round.
Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci told an interesting anecdote in his latest column that proved how otherworldly that was because, when building the park, the Marlins specifically tried to make it so that no player could hit the roof.
From his column:
"Back when the engineers from Walter P. Moore were designing the retractable roof of Marlins Park, they set out to determine how high the roof would have to be so as not to interfere with balls in play. They studied the air density and temperatures of Miami and plugged those variables into equations from NASA. Then they wrote an algorithm "to generate a volumetric approximation of all the possible batted ball flight paths" and then applied it to their Building Information Modeling to determine the final geometry of the roof structure.
The engineers finally arrived at a height of 210 feet above the ground at its apex (above second base) to make sure no batted ball hit the roof. It tapered to a low of 128 feet above the ground in deep right-centerfield."
Verducci has more in the column on how high exactly the Marlins calculated that blast from Judge to be, Head over to the column to read further. Judge didn't only hit the roof in the Derby, he apparently hit it during batting practice as well.
Aaron Judge HITS THE ROOF in BP! pic.twitter.com/2D3X73aUI0
— Andrew (@Andrew_Rotondi) July 10, 2017
Aaron Judge, destroying baseballs and defying equations made by NASA.