Powerless No More

So Jim Bowden got his white whale, even if this one's more of a Big Donkey than an aquatic mammal.  Adam Dunn is a Nat.  Now we've got something to cheer.

The Nats haven't had a player with Dunn's power since Alfonso Soriano blistered the back of the bullpen walls at RFK.  While Soriano seemed to have an effortless swing that pushed the ball farther than you'd expect, Dunn's power is more explosive, more violent.  When he connects, the ball goes every bit as far, but he does it with brute force.

The Web site Hit Tracker measures every homer hit in baseball.  They use charts of the stadiums, and various measurements to figure out how far balls actually traveled.

There, Dunn's 40 homers -- second best in all of baseball -- are dissected with mathematical precision.  Sure, it's easy to say that he's a function of the Great American SmallPark, but it ain't so.  When Dunn hits 'em, he hits 'em.  Dunn doesn't scrape the walls.

By standard distance, Dunn had the 1st, 3rd and 7th longest homers in all of baseball.  His 490-foot blast, which came off a helpless Glendon Rusch, still probably hasn't come down.

If he had hit that at Nats Park, it'd have scattered a few Senators.

Even more amazing, the average Dunn homer traveled an ungodly 413 feet.  That's the highest total in all of baseball.

The longest homer hit at Nats Park last year was Ryan Howard's titanic 445-foot shot into the scoreboard seats off poor Matty Chico in May.

Adam Dunn, on the other hand, had SEVEN homers that went further than that.  Seven!

He had more homers over 420 feet (15) than any Nat had homers, period!

Sure, they all count the same.  A run is a run.  But the beer sure tastes colder when there's a chance to be entertained, and Dunn does that -- something that's been lacking from Nats games for far too long.

Chris Needham used to write Capitol Punishment before the power outage.