Not all home runs are created equal. Of course, some go farther than others, leave the bat at greater speeds or make a bigger impact on the game. But some just look cooler than the rest—like this one Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy hit on Monday night against the Blue Jays.
With the bases empty and Los Angeles trailing Toronto 3–2 in the bottom of the eighth, Muncy pounced on a hanging changeup from Trevor Richards. He crushed it 435 feet with an exit velocity of 109.2 mph.
But it wasn’t just how far or how hard Muncy hit the ball that made it pleasing to watch. It was how he hit it.
WOW, MAX. pic.twitter.com/RKbnzTt6Cj
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) July 25, 2023
You can almost see Muncy’s eyes light up when the pitch begins to hang—and he put everything he had into the swing. Because MLB players are the best hitters in the world, they make difficult things look easy. Elly De La Cruz hit the longest home run of Monday night at 456 feet, but he did it with a perfect, fundamentally sound swing. Muncy’s swing was a beautifully vicious hack, the likes of which you rarely see. He identified a meatball and decided he was going to hit it as hard as he could. Then he punctuated it with an emphatic bat toss. It’s the kind of homer you can watch over and over again.
