Splash brothers: Look what happens when sluggers blast home runs off an aircraft carrier

Reporting from SAN DIEGO —  Baseball is war, and war is hell, and hell is other people. That’s a lot of misery associated with one little sport. But sometimes baseball is just sublime. The other day, off the flight deck of the carrier Midway, they held a home run derby. The rest is naval history.

It fell on the solstice on this most molten of SoCal summers. The only place that didn’t seem to be burning was San Diego Harbor. If they had held this home run derby inland, you could’ve baked bread on a slugger’s forehead.

Instead, to the coast they came. A year ago, when the Lake Elsinore Storm, single-A grandsons of the Padres, were picked to host the California League All-Star game, team President Dave Oster pondered whether they might hold the hitting contest on the Midway.

Like a home run itself, a great idea seems a triumph against the gods.

Rip, rip, rip. Splash, splash, splash. You get the picture. Top sluggers from the Cal and Carolina leagues, the all-star participants, would launch “bombs” off a Navy ship. It would be baseball eye candy. For fans, the stuff of a thousand selfies.

Now, holding a home run derby off the bow of a retired aircraft carrier would seem a fairly simple endeavor, except this is California, the most prickly of places. So the Port of San Diego had to approve, as well as a roster of other agencies, environmental and otherwise. At one point, I think your local PTA might’ve weighed in with a few thoughts.

“The port was the big one,” Oster admits. “But we wanted to clean it up right and do the right thing.”

In case you were wondering, baseballs are mostly organic. I eat one a day, for health reasons, and — like a good peach — they go down easily with a pinch of cinnamon.

Still, there was concern over the environmental harm a baseball might do if it sank in San Diego Bay. Like most of us, Mother Earth isn’t what she used to be. You can’t be too careful — which by the way is the new state motto: “You can’t be too careful — or too nuts.”

So one of Oster’s first tasks was to determine how long a baseball would float in seawater. For the record: 1 minute 58 seconds —roughly the time it used to take Smoky Burgess to reach first base.

The organizers then knew they had less than two minutes to rescue each home run ball. On kayaks and jet skis, volunteers would stand by awaiting the splash, then race to get the ball before it sank and some poor mermaid choked on her dinner.

Far as I could tell, the ragtag armada of volunteers and fans scooped up all the floaters Monday night. I don’t know how many times the sluggers reached the water. In the first round, the eight contestants smashed 40 into the drink — sending bombs 150 feet over the bow of the ship, then 200 additional feet to a bobbing pink buoy that served as the 350-foot home run fence.

At launch time, a devilish wind blew port to starboard, and the setting sun did the sluggers no favors, either. From the cage, the splash brothers may as well have been peering into the flaming rear end of an F/A-18 Hornet. As if hitting home runs on demand isn’t agony enough.

But bash them they did.

I’ll tell you who’s impressive and might have a real future in this fickle, maddening, ungodly sport: an infielder for the Bakersfield Blaze with the race-car name of Kyle Petty (no relation), who won the thing. Some of his moon shots may have touched Tijuana. After he sealed the win, he asked for a few more pitches — “Come on, let’s keep going.” Smashing cowhide into the sea turned out to be his kind of fun.

Good kid too. During the ceremony, he thanked his old man, Scott, who in turn mentioned his wife, Susan. In fact, on the day after Father’s Day, young Petty gave a shout-out to all the dads in attendance, and then, as rarely happens on flight decks or baseball diamonds, all these tough types sort of teared up — before quickly getting in line for another frosty beverage.

Like I said, it was a splendid thing, this derby. Sons and fathers, celebrating the solstice, celebrating baseball, saluting the past — and the future — with winning blasts off a legendary ship.

And don’t you think Major League Baseball, which holds its own All-Star dance in San Diego on July 12, wishes it thought of this first?

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Twitter: @erskinetimes