Nelson Cruz launches the first of his two home runs on Wednesday, April 8th.A little Monday morning food for thought: of the thousands of home runs that are clubbed during each and every major league season (during this decade, that figure has typically ranged from 4,800 to 5,500), fewer than five percent travel in excess of 450 feet ... and fewer than 0.5 percent travel in excess of 470 feet. Scarcity is a big part of what makes the tape-measure home run assume such magical qualities; the less we see it, the more we properly appreciate it.

Of course, when I refer to distance in feet, I'm not referring to the difficult-to-find and generally inaccurate measurements rendered by ballpark employees immediately after the home runs; rather, I'm referring to the calculations of Hit Tracker Online's Greg Rybarczyk, who tirelessly catalogs more than 95 percent of the home runs clubbed in Major League Baseball each and every year. Since many of us have already familiarized ourselves with his work, we'll skip the rest of the ornately worded introduction and jump right into the actual content, beginning with this refresher:

True Distance, a.k.a. Actual Distance - If the home run flew uninterrupted all the way back to field level, the actual distance the ball traveled from home plate, in feet. If the ball's flight was interrupted before returning all the way down to field level (as is usually the case), the estimated distance the ball would have traveled if its flight had continued uninterrupted all the way down to field level.

Standard Distance - The estimated distance in feet the home run would have traveled if it flew uninterrupted all the way down to field level, and if the home run had been hit with no wind, in 70 degree air at sea level. Standard distance factors out the influence of wind, temperature and altitude, and is thus the best way of comparing home runs hit under a variety of different conditions.

[All home runs are sorted by true distance first, with standard distance acting as the tiebreaker if necessary. MLB.com video provided wherever available.]

No. 10 - Hang It, Lefty
April 8th, 2009 vs. Cleveland (Rafael Perez)
True Distance: 448 Feet | Standard Distance: 444 Feet | Trajectory

Notes: Every so often, you'll read about some budding offensive prospect whose inability to translate his "batting practice power" into "live game power" is flagged as a weakness. Given that Nelson Cruz has now amassed seven consecutive 20-plus-homer campaigns across five different professional levels, I'm going to assume that any latent concern of that sort surrounding an early-20s Cruz was quickly dispelled.

Cruz's single biggest problem in 2009 was, oddly enough, his thoroughly pedestrian performance versus southpaws (.235/.320/.432 in 150 plate appearances), but there was no inkling of a problem when he launched a 448-foot rocket against Indians left-hander Rafael Perez into the second-deck club level in left field, rendering him just the 11th player in the history of Rangers Ballpark in Arlington to deposit a baseball in that area and padding the Rangers' eventual 8-5 victory. Oh yeah, and did I mention it was his second home run of the game?

No. 9 - Detroit Salvage Company
April 10th, 2009 at Detroit (Eddie Bonine)
True Distance: 450 Feet | Standard Distance: 445 Feet | Video | Trajectory

Notes: Raise your hand if you skimmed the above information and executed a double take after thinking that you read "Eddie Bovine." Meaningless home run in an early-April lost cause, but there's a reason why Cruz logged the fourth-largest average standard [home run] distance in baseball this past season. There's a measure that doesn't discriminate by game context.

No. 8 - "This Kid Can Hit"
April 26th, 2009 at Baltimore (Brad Bergesen)
True Distance: 452 Feet | Standard Distance: 435 Feet | Video | Trajectory

Notes: More derisively referred to as "that game where Brandon McCarthy choked away a 5-1 lead in Baltimore," there was nevertheless a power-hitting bright spot in the form of Chris Davis, who clubbed Bergesen's hanging slider clean over the 400-foot-deep center field wall at Camden Yards and put himself on a 54-homer pace with his sixth home run in just 18 team games played to that point.

Unfortunately, his season was already nearing its apex; Davis reached his seasonal high-water mark of .239/.299/.521 on May 14th, but soon thereafter commenced with the offensive free fall that would seal his remedial trip to Triple-A Oklahoma City. Some of the problems have been ironed out, but the privilege of watching those tape-measure shots might be ceded if he doesn't start clicking very quickly at the outset of the 2010 regular season.

[Part II is tentatively slated to drop on Wednesday morning.]