Neill Sheridan

Neill Rawlins Sheridan
(Wild Horse)

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 1½", Weight 195 lb.
• School University of San Francisco
• High School Sacramento High School
• Debut September 19, 1948
• Final Game September 26, 1948
• Born November 20, 1921 in Sacramento, CA USA
• Died October 15, 2015 in Antioch, CA USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Outfielder Neill Sheridan played twelve seasons in professional baseball from 1943 to 1954.

Sheridan did not play baseball for his high school or college teams. He played football and ran track in high school and played football in college. He did play semi-pro baseball well enough to be signed by the San Francisco Seals in 1943 however.

Sheridan had four seasons in his minor league career that he hit over .300, all in class A to Open competition. His career was spent mainly in the Pacific Coast League. He hit .283 with 118 home runs in his minor league career. In the second game of a doubleheader at Edmonds Field in Sacramento, CA, while playing for the Sacramento Solons, he hit one of the longest home runs ever measured. His line drive shot disappeared into the night behind the left-field fence and brought little immediate notice. The next day, however, a spectator showed up at the team offices claiming that the ball he hit landed on the back seat of his car, breaking its back window, while the car was parked on a residential street behind the stadium's parking lot. A surveying firm officially measured the blast at 613.80 feet, from home plate to the parking spot. However, as there was no witness to the ball's touching down, a doubt will remain as to whether the automobile was really parked where its owner said it was, and whether it did in fact have its back window shattered by the mighty blast.

To add a surreal touch to the story, in between the two games of the doubleheader, Sheridan beat an Arabian horse in a foot race. It was a 60-yard zigzag course, and Sheridan and the horse, called Rabric, ran successively, but Sheridan's time of 11.4 seconds beat that of his equine competitor by a tenth of a second.

Sheridan did appear in two games with the Boston Red Sox with no hits in 1948.

Further Reading

• Rick Cabral: "Neill 'Wild Horse' Sheridan and the Longest Home Run Ever Measured", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 40, Number 2 (Fall 2011), pp. 94-98.

Related Sites

• Neill Sheridan at the SABR Bio Project