Aaron Judge’s Home Run Derby performance was so amazing that even NASA was confounded.
When Marlins Park was constructed, according to Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, the engineers designing the retractable roof wanted to ensure that it would be impossible for a fly ball to hit it. They went so far as to take atmospheric measurements and use NASA formulas to determine the necessary height of the roof to ensure that it would not interfere with any balls in play, and ultimately determined that a 210-foot roof at its apex would do the trick.
It looked like it worked — no fly ball had ever hit the Marlins Park roof in a game or batting practice. Until Monday, that is, when Judge managed to do it twice — once in batting practice and once in the Home Run Derby itself. The reason Judge’s roof-scraper didn’t count in the Derby is because the Marlins set the ground rules of the park to state that any ball hitting the roof would be treated as in play, having assumed that such a rule would never need to be consulted.
Aaron Judge: so powerful that even the laws of science and physics cannot contain him.
