Mike Petriello just posted a really good article that relies on new analytical data to not only prove that Teds HR went 502 feet, but that measurements back then may have underestimated the distance
More at the link, and yes, its well worth a read in its entirety
Ten seasons on, the technology has been upgraded more than once, added the ability to capture weather data, and each ballpark has been scanned down to the inch. Since 2015, Statcast has tracked nearly 50,000 home runs, and only three of them have been projected at 500-plus feet. No lefty has even managed to hit a ball in Fenway 460 feet, making tall tales like Mickey Mantle’s supposed 565-foot home run seem like exactly that, and making Ted’s 502 seem implausible.
Haberdashery standards aside, that bit of information remains tremendously useful all these years later, because seat 21 in row 37 remains exactly where it was in Williams’s day, just now with a seatback. Since each Major League park has been scanned via lidar (a form of laser measurement that allows for precise calculation of distances), that means that we can measure the exact distance from home plate to Boucher’s seat. When we do that, we get 496 feet.
https://www.mlb.com/redsox/news/ted-williams-502-foot-fenway-home-run-investigationSo by today’s measurement standards, Williams didn’t hit his home run 502 feet. He instead hit it something more like 525-530 feet, based on lidar estimates, which for our purposes is both good (it explains why no one has been able to come close since!) and bad (that’s an even harder to believe figure!) Which is it?
More at the link, and yes, its well worth a read in its entirety