A broadcaster for the New York Yankees quipped the other day that a home run in Yankee Stadium went so far that it "would have been a home run in Yellowstone!"/Rebecca Latson file

References to national parks in mass media can be surprising. 

For instance, in The Public, a 2019 movie about how homeless men occupy a public library in Cincinnati during a particularly cold cold snap, one scene depicts the questions librarians get from the members of the public looking for books. One question focused on parks: "Why were so many Civil War battles fought in national parks?" It's not a new question, though one you don't hear every day and likely to bring a chuckle from national park aficionados.

The other day, while I was watching the New York Yankees play the Texas Rangers, Yankee second baseman Gleyber Torres hit a home run that traveled 406 feet. One broadcaster, noting that some home runs are derided for the relatively short distance they have to travel in some ballparks to be home runs, mentioned that that HR would have been a home run in any major league ballpark. That spurred Michael Kay to remark that, "It would have been a home run in Yellowstone!"

Finally, while reading American Moonshot, John F. Kennedy And The Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley, I came across this passage:

At the beginning of 1958, the U.S. Navy's Vanguard program was still mired in the short-term effort to put a satellite into space. By then, Senator Kennedy had taken to calling the International Geophysical Year the "Geo Fizzle Year," and his disillusionment with Eisenhower's systematic approach to the space race was now a regular talking point. At a Harvard Club dinner in March, he even subtly mocked Vanguard's first disastrous launch effort. "When the elevator at the Washington Monument caught fire in December and smoke poured out of the building," he deadpanned, "one drunk staggered by and declared, 'They will never get it off the ground.'"