Junior Caminero has already built a reputation as one of baseball’s loudest hitters, but the longest homer of his young career may have happened far from the major league stage - and far from anywhere most fans would expect.
The blast in question came on Nov. 12, 2022, at Empire Ballpark on Australia’s southwest coast, a small stadium that holds about 1,500 people and, as those who know it will tell you, maybe even more snakes. Ask anyone who saw it, and the memory still lands with force.
“It’s probably one of the farthest balls I've seen hit in my life,” former Perth Heat player Jake Bowey told me over a Zoom.
“It’s 400 feet to the top of the shed and then just into the dark of the night,” broadcaster Paul Morgan said. “In my 10-12 years of doing Heat baseball, I've never seen a shot that deep in a game.”
Caminero, now barely 23, has already piled up 78 home runs in 293 big league games entering Wednesday. He hit 45 last year and has 26 this season. He’s also launched huge shots in the Dominican Winter League and at Tropicana Field, and he’ll be in his second straight Home Run Derby next week.
Still, the one that keeps coming up in Perth might be the most absurd of them all.
Four years ago, the then-19-year-old was sent by Tampa Bay to the Australian Baseball League for the 2022-23 winter season after being traded from the Guardians to the Rays in 2021 and posting big numbers in the Minors. The Rays had a strong relationship with the Perth Heat, and Caminero arrived as a prized prospect in a place that’s a long way from home - more than 11,000 miles away, with kangaroos around, cricket grounds turned into baseball fields and players being recruited off SnapChat.
He didn’t look remotely out of place.
Caminero hit 14 homers in just 155 at-bats, finishing second in the league. He drove in 37 runs and hit .303/.368/.613.
“For a lot of teams, there's a lot of prospects that have come down, but Caminero was clearly a guy, like, this guy's going to The Show,” Morgan said. “He was head and shoulders above any prospect. He was box office.”
Bowey remembered a batting practice session that made the power obvious right away.
“I remember watching one of his BP rounds and he took about 15 swings and he hit 14 home runs, all on an absolute line drive,” Bowey said. “And the one that he didn't hit a home run hit the top of the fence. And it didn't get above 10 feet off the ground.”
Then came the game against the Adelaide Giants on Nov. 12. On an 0-1 count, Caminero turned on Jordy Grose and sent the ball over the left-center field wall, over the camera stand, over the giant shed in center and over just about everything else in sight.
At Empire Ballpark, clearing the shed in batting practice was one thing. Doing it in a real game was something else entirely.
“Yeah, to kind of clear the shed entirely is a whole different beast,” Morgan said.
“The bottom of the shed is 400 feet on the dot,” Bowey said. “And then it's, give or take, 80 feet high.”
Bowey added that the shed stretches another 60 to 70 feet beyond that, which means Caminero’s homer would have needed to travel somewhere in the 450-foot range or beyond.
“It would've had to be between 450 and 480,” Morgan said. “450, easy.”
That kind of shot is even more ridiculous when you factor in the park itself. Empire Ballpark sits close to Australia’s coast, where the wind can make life miserable for hitters.
“You're fighting, what they call, the Fremantle Doctor -- the breeze that flows off the Indian Ocean,” Morgan told me. “The wind gets pretty gnarly, so to do that is phenomenal.”
Bowey said the Perth dugout “went crazy” after the homer, though the Heat would eventually get used to seeing Caminero do things like that. Caminero, naturally, had his own reaction too.
“I've been lucky enough to see some balls go a long way,” Bowey said. “I've played against guys like Delmon Young.
When I was in the States, I played against guys like Jon Singleton. Some of these guys can hit a ball a long way.
So, for Junior to hit that ball, you know it's far.”
As for the ball itself, Morgan isn’t sure anyone ever found it. Once it got past the shed, it was basically gone.
“There are snakes everywhere out there in that field,” the broadcaster told me. “You're taking a risk to get that home-run ball.”
He said the head groundskeeper sometimes has to chase off snakes before fans even enter the park.
And beyond the shed? There’s also a grain train railway running along that side of the field, which gives you a sense of just how far Caminero sent that one into the Australian night.
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