Schoolboy Rowe’s launches a batting practice bomb into the Polo Grounds’ center-field bleachers, a feat never before performed

Schoolboy Rowe’s launches a batting practice bomb into the Polo Grounds’ center-field bleachers, a feat never before performed

Prior to a pre-season contest in New York, (and exactly one week before Schoolboy Rowe’s official major league debut), the highly touted Tigers pitching prospect launches a batting practice bomb into the Polo Grounds’ center-field bleachers, a feat never before performed since the stadium’s 1923 reconfiguration. It will be more than 15 years—July 18, 1948, to be precise—before Rowe’s feat is finally matched in the course of a game, by Negro Leaguer Luke Easter, and roughly 20—i.e. April 29, 1953—before the first major league version, courtesy of Joe Adcock.