I think the real question here isn’t “how far could Superman hit a baseball?”, but rather, “could Batman catch it?”
Sure, but afterward he might need to be repaired.
Why don’t we work backward? Which has a lower autoignition temperature, the baseball or the bat? Surely the yarn or the leather would burn first; so at what temperature would that happen, and over what distance? That should give some kind of ballpark upper limit.
This issue actually came up in one Superman story around 1968 - not the one that Bryan Ekers linked the cover to. The answer is that Supes anticipated that he could hit a baseball high enough to hit a satellite orbiting the Earth in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
The plot was that Supes suddenly started showing up on a variety of sporting fields and participating in the games - North American football, soccer, rugby, basketball, and so on. At some point during each game, he would kick or throw the ball out of sight, then leave. Lots of media speculation that Supes has finally bought it, drunk a kryptonite cocktail, etc.
The last game is a little league baseball game, where Supes goes to bat against a 10 year old kid - who strikes Supes out! That was the cover illustration, of this kid fanning Supes. In apparent frustration and a fit of bad sportsmanship, Supes grabs the baseball and hucks it way into the sky, then flies off.
Then the déneoument. We follow Supes flying way up to satellite range, and there’s a weird looking satellite with tubes sticking out of it. And on each of the tubes is one of the various balls that Supes has kicked or thrown into the sky, including the baseball. Just as he arrives, the satellite activates and starts to suck air in through the tubes. Since the balls are on the tubes, the satellite sucks the air out of each of the balls, including the baseball.
We find out what the heck is going on from Supes’ thought balloons, which explain that he came across the satellite and recognized that it was an air-sampling satellite from an alien civilization. If the satellite sucked in the air from Earth’s atmosphere and the air was suitable, the alien civilization would send an invasion force to conquer Earth. As well, the statellite had monitoring equipment so that if Supes tried to interfere with it, that would set off an alarm (via hyper-space, no doubt), summoning the invasion force.
So Supes had prepared all of the various balls with highly poisonous gases instead of regular air, and gone around playing in all the sports, so that the monitoring devices wouldn’t think he was doing anything to the satellite. Each time he threw or kicked a ball out of sight, he was actually using his super-strength and super-coordination to make each ball impale itself on one of the sampling tubes of the satellite. Then, when the satellite sucked in air, it sucked in the highly poisonous gases and sent a report to the alien civilization that Earth was uninhabitable, so they never would send any more probes.
And, the reason he didn’t actually hit the baseball was because just as the kid was about to pitch it, he checked it out with his super-vision and realised that the seams had frayed. If he hit the ball, it would rupture, releasing the highly concentrated noxious gas he had inserted in its core, killing all the people at the baseball game. So he allowed the kid pitcher to strike him out, and then threw the ball up to the satellite.
All of which is a long way to say that Supes believed that he could hit the baseball into the upper level of the atmosphere, but was only deterred from doing so because of the frayed seam. Thus allowing a neat cover illustration of a kid striking him out, which you sort of think was the point of the whole lame story.
When did Little League baseball use inflated balls?
And was one I chose to ignore while sitting in a particular barber’s chair. Based on all that, including my indifference, we come to the total of: Not a fuck of a lot.
Excellent point. That really changes the math.
Well, Superman prepared this ball specially to have a gas core…
Many years ago, I don’t recall where, I saw a discussion centered around a certain comic book cover depicting Superman lifting a tall building by the corner of its foundation. (This might be what brossa is remembering as well.)
Geeks were all in a lather because as drawn, the scene violated all sorts of physical laws; e.g. the portion of the foundation he was holding couldn’t have supported the weight of the building, the building itself would have broken apart at the angle he was holding it, and so on.
I don’t recall a force field being involved, but one common theory was that all of Supe’s powers are actually telekinetic in nature, and thus not bound by earthly laws of physics. (This also explains flight without any lift or thrust.)
If this is the case, then the answer to how far he can hit a baseball is: as far as he wants to. 
…Incidentally (and somewhat OT), this also reminds me of an explanation of how nobody can recognize that Clark Kent is Superman due to his brilliant disguise of a pair of glasses: His super-vision coupled with the glasses’ lenses create a hypnotic effect which makes everybody see Clark as a skinny weakling who bears no resemblence to the Man of Steel.
It seems to me this is fairly simple, because ultimately the question is what’s the most force of impact a baseball can sustain and still maintain its structural integrity.
The problem wouldn’t be the bat or the batter. Posit that there’s no limit on the force Superman could put into the swing and that he’s not going to injure himself with torque or lose control of the bat… I suppose there’s a speed at which the friction could cause the bat to fly apart and/or burst into flames, but that point is MUCH higher than the force the ball would disintegrate at… “regular” players can tear up a ball if they hit it in just the right place.
So it’s not how hard could Superman hit a baseball, it’s how hard can a baseball be hit? It would seem the factor with the lowest upper limit is the baseball not coming apart.
I don’t know what this is, but I’m sure they’re tested up to a certain force of impact?
This is presuming that a shattered ball will lose all aerodynamics and fall to the floor fairly soon. I guess theoretically if you, like, shot it out of a cannon it wouldn’t much matter what shape it was in because it would keep traveling just on sheer momentum.
Okay I change my answer… I don’t think there is an upper limit
Well, we should just ask him.
http://www.asksuperman.com/Asksuperman/Welcome.html
But don’t be surprised if the answer comes off as a bit condescending.
I think if there’s any atmosphere, then the shape will matter. No matter how fast you fire it, dust will only go so far before air friction stops it. So if you put a baseball in a cannon that propelled the ball, but vaporized it, the atoms and molecules of the (former) ball wouldn’t go very far.
I still think that ‘tearing the cover off the ball’ is the limiting factor (and since an air cannon has lower forces than a baseball bat, Supes could blow a baseball farther than he could hit it).
That’s what I was curious about. However, I still think the bat is the weak element, structurally… or maybe not, which is why I was asking.
By the way, there was a television show here that tried to answer the question of how fast a baseball could go if you shot it out of a tank. With the help of the Cambodian Army, they actually got to test it out and the answer is: 327 km/h (about 200 mph).
For standard MLB equipment, the bat probably is the weak element. But it looks like the bat regulations are a lot more permissive than the ball regulations. The pros don’t usually use a uniform-thickness bat made of hornbeam or the like, because it’d be horribly heavy, and the weight is a much bigger issue than the occasional shattered bat. For Clark, though, that wouldn’t be an issue, and I guarantee you that a 2 3/4 inch log of good Eastern hornbeam (if you could even find one that big) would be much more durable than any stitched-leather ball.
True, but I had standard equipment in mind, rather than legal equipment. I think it’s a more interesting problem if the only thing that’s different from a regular game is the strength and accuracy of the batter.
There’s your in-the-park infield home run – bury the ball, and run the bases while someone digs it up!
I submit that the cover picture depicts a ground-rule double, if the ball really is buried.
By the way, the story from that comic, kindly outlined above by Northern Piper, has got to be the stupidest goddamned thing I’ve ever heard.
I’d love to test the wind shear velocity required to tatter a regulation baseball, and the max speed of MLB bat before it combusts from atmospheric friction. After those were determined, it would take very little to calculate 'sac Newton’s 2nd law as it applies to a batted ball. ( F=ma, where mass times acceleration would yield the force applied, and thus the distance of an optimim trajectory hit baseball.)
Anecdotally, during batting practice prior to the 1998 All-Star game Mark McGwire fouled one off, and the catcher as well as several others near the batting cage reported the strong odor of smoke, and the bat indeed had a narrow scorch mark where the ball had grazed.
The farthest hit baseball without performance enhancing drugs (or by a man born on Krypton) is 700+ feet by Josh Gibson. In 1934 he hit the wall two feet from the top of the centerfield bleachers of Yankee Stadium, a distance of 580 feet from home plate. The following year he became the only man to hit one fair, completely out of that park and it was measured at slightly over 700 ft.
If anyone could conceivably hit one further, it could only be Superman.
No, who’s on first. 
No. This sets off the BS meter in so many ways. . . .