As we begin to recuperate from the Yankees' highly anticlimactic Game Six triumph, await the impending introduction of new Texas Rangers hitting coach Clint Hurdle -- who formally accepted the club's job offer on Wednesday -- and, most importantly, gaze down the road towards baseball's fast-approaching hot stove season, let us take a moment to reflect a little more upon the most jaw-dropping home runs from the regular season that was:

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.]

No. 7 - Hammerin' Hank (Hank Blalock)
August 8th, 2009 at Los Angeles (Jered Weaver)
True Distance: 454 Feet | Standard Distance: 442 Feet | Trajectory | Video

Notes: There's something about the max-effort uppercut swings of guys like Hank Blalock and Matt Stairs that has always resonated with me. Sure, those violent hacks are quite prone to connecting with nothing more than air molecules, but when they make clean, sweet contact and generate some lift underneath the incoming pitch, it's truly a beautiful thing to witness -- the arcing trajectory of the ball, the stunned silence of the road crowd punctuated by some gasps of exclamation, the slow jog out of the batter's box. It may be one of Blalock's only redeeming qualities at this point, but at least it's a pretty photogenic quality.

This two-run monstrosity by Blalock -- his 23rd blast in just 91 games, as well as his third home run in his last three games -- was the longest belted at Angel Stadium of Anaheim in 2009 (as measured by "true distance"), but wasn't enough to lift a team that mustered just six hits and, yes, just two runs against Anaheim on this Saturday afternoon in August. One day later, Texas rode a masterful Derek Holland complete-game shutout to a road series win and climbed within 3.5 games of the first-place Angels, but failed in their quest to draw any closer than that during the regular season's closing weeks.

No. 6 - Full Extension (Marlon Byrd)
June 30th, 2009 vs. Los Angeles (Joe Saunders)
True Distance: 454 Feet | Standard Distance: 453 Feet | Trajectory | Video

Notes: Having manipulated the ball-strike count (1-2) to his advantage, Joe Saunders apparently went to the well one too many times in lobbing yet another low-80s change-up plateward -- a 450-foot mistake. The Rangers would ultimately march to a 9-5 victory (albeit one entailing the obligatory ninth-inning scare from C.J. Wilson and Frank Francisco), and proceeded to win seven of their next nine games thereafter, but eventually succumbed to a red-hot Angels squad.

No. 5 - High-Water Mark (Nelson Cruz)
May 30th, 2009 vs. Oakland (Kevin Cameron)
True Distance: 454 Feet | Standard Distance: 454 Feet | Trajectory | Video

Notes: Cruz's remarkable 11-game late-May offensive surge (.415/.489/1.024 in 47 plate appearances) culminated in his slaughtering of this mislocated breaking ball, denoting his seventh home run in that time frame; sadly, the Red Sox' Edgar Renteria would be the one to procure American League Player of the Week honors. In what seems to be a running theme, Texas steamrolled to a 14-1 victory over Oakland and build a decade-best 5.5-game divisional lead, but by the time another fortnight had passed the tide had already started to turn.

No. 4 - Double Vision (Nelson Cruz)
July 10th, 2009 vs. Seattle (Shawn Kelley)
True Distance: 459 Feet | Standard Distance: 459 Feet | Trajectory | Video

Notes: Fact: This was the longest home run belted at Safeco Field in 2009 ... by a whopping 11 feet. Fact: Cruz registered among baseball's top five hitters in terms of average ball velocity off bat (118.3 mph) and average standard distance (413.9 feet) in 2009. Fact: Cruz's workout regimen is apparently nothing short of legendary. He's not a Pujols-esque paragon of baseball perfection (really, who else is?), but his hard work and innate talent have vaulted him into baseball's elite power-hitting class, and for that we should not resist in commending him.