How? Why? It is a made-up competition. It's just for fun, really. The pitches are lobbed right over the middle of the plate _ that's the whole point.
And yet, to many fans, the Home Run Derby has become the star attraction of Major League Baseball's Midsummer Classic, usurping even the All-Star Game in popularity and anticipation.
So it is that we expect something great or even magical to happen Monday night at Marlins Park when eight power hitters _ led by hometown hero Giancarlo Stanton and Yankees phenom Aaron Judge _ christen the 33rd annual Home Run Derby and first in Miami.
And then merely hope the game itself, Tuesday night, will justify its ceremonial top of the marquee.
It is not a mystery why the home run contest, its format under constant tinkering since its inception in 1985, has endured, grown essential and is now more popular than ever.
The home run hitter, the slugger, is the most magical archetype in sports, a Brobdingnagian figure, imprimatur of strength, giant of deed.
The aura around this special athlete is such that the man who invented the art of long ball, Babe Ruth, remains the single most iconic name in baseball lore, and arguably in all of sports history, 82 years after he last played.
The Babe: Forever current in the American lexicon, the imagery around him so real even those few of us are alive who can recall having seen him play.
The aura of the home run is why Willie Mays and Hank Aaron are embedded in the American conscience in a way that Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew (who have the NL and AL batting title trophies named for them) are not.
The mystique around the home run hitter proved tough enough and deep enough to survive even steroids and the fake, tainted, cartoon accomplishments of the Sosa/McGwire/Bonds crowd.
The home run rallied, overcame.
Finesse has its place in baseball, yes. The pitchers who live on the black edge of the plate. The leadoff hitters able to drop a feathery bunt down the line.
But it is the home run that is visceral. We know it from the sound the bat makes, from the gasp of the crowd, how it lifts us off our seats.
We marvel at what we used to call the "tape measure" shot, the distance an estimation. That was before everything went high-tech and they measured distance electronically, by lasers, to the centimeter. And augmented that with bat speed and mph at which the ball left the park, not to mention trajectory.
All we required back in the day was the sound of bat on ball and we knew. That and the sight of shoulders slumping on the mound and that instinctive pause in the batter's box as the hitter admired his work.
(Oh, but don't you dare pause too long, batter, or luxuriate to trot the bases too slowly, or you will have embroiled yourself in the violation of perhaps baseball's most sacredly held Unwritten Rule).
In the Home Run Derby there are no pitchers to show up, no bases to run, no opposing dugout to enrage. There is just you and your raw power.
The Derby fascinates in part because it is an unapologetic display of machismo, of my-bat's-bigger-than-your-bat. It's the baseball equivalent of being on the carnival midway and watching two men alternately swing a sledgehammer to see who can make the bell ring first.
Players want in it. That's why Logan Morrison, the ex-Marlin with 24 home runs for the Rays, publicly complained he should have been invited.
That's why Stanton eagerly wanted to defend the Derby crown he won last year _ the first Marlin to win it, and with a record-shattering 61 total home runs hit.
ESPN, televising the Monday slugfest, will get the Derby of its dreams if Stanton replicates last year's fireworks in his home park and in the championship round meets the Yanks' Judge, who leads the majors with a Ruthian 30 homers.
(Marlins fans might prefer Stanton in the final versus teammate Justin Bour. Could happen. They're in different brackets).
The Home Run Derby is what the slam dunk contest and 3-point shooting contest used to be to the NBA All-Star break, back before superstars stopped deigning to dunk for show and the three-point shot became so common it took over the league like stinkweed.
The Home Run Derby is what the NFL has forever failed to find as an adjunct to its awful Pro Bowl.
Be honest. Baseball stopped being as popular as football a long time ago. It isn't as sexy or hip as basketball. Even baseball fans say the game is too slow.
What baseball continues to do better than anybody, though, is the All-Star break, and that starts with what we will see Monday night:
Moonshots over Miami.
