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The early outfield dimensions were just insane. They got a more realistic over the years. Good info on the updates, ogre! I wonder if Babe Ruth was a right handed hitter if there would have been an opposite configuration. I also seem to remember that when the Giants played there the announcers would often refer to the fact the the field wasn't level. You often hear that a team has the wind at their back in a given quarter, they used to say a team was marching downhill or uphill.
Last edited by square peg; 09-23-2008 at 08:04 PM..
Ogre is right about the monuments in deep center field. On ESPN classics "Sport Century "bio 1 hr. documentary on the Yankees, it has a small snippet of one of the Yankee outfielders trying to fetch the baseball from BEHIND the monuments! I would think the chances of having a ball fielded from there would be one in a thousand. I mean 490 feet to dead center? Sheesh!
The funny thing about the short distance down the right field line was that Ruth could hit a baseball out of any ballpark. He didn't need such a short porch. But he was the man who popularized the home run (prior to Ruth, there was Frank "Home Run" Baker--so nicknamed because of the prodigious number of homers he hit. One year he led the league with 13!) so they played to the crowds and made it easy for Ruth to hit even more than he ordinarily would have.
The reason I separate the Babe from every ballplayer that played is when he hit his 29 home runs in 1919, that was more than any TEAM in either laegue, and then he goes to 54 the next year and 59 in 1921. IMO that stat says more about why Babe Ruth is the greatest player in the history of baseball.
Wikipedia article on Yankee Stadium: Yankee Stadium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Take it for what it's worth, but according to this article, the short porch in right resulted from a combination of the need to fit the park into existing city streets (as was often the case back in the day--a la Fenway), and the decision to extend the right-side grandstand around the corner and keep the bleachers from narrowing to just a few rows behind right field. If they had been willing to sacrifice some seating down in the right field corner, they could have had the fence about as deep as it is in most parks.
Interesting section in the article on the decision to have as many seats as they did. This was much larger than other parks of the day, and they built Yankee Stadium at a time when baseball had been through a temporary dip in popularity in the wake of the Black Sox scandal, so the ownership took a risk by sinking the bucks into building a stadium this large. The willingness to take the risk was based partly on the fact that they designed the stadium for multiple uses from the beginning. There were football games and boxing matches in addition to baseball. An interesting bit of info was that there was a running track around the perimeter of the field. The article didn't state definitively whether the track was ever actually used for foot races, but, according to this article, it turned out to be useful for giving fielders going after fly balls some warning that they were approaching the wall, which eventually led to the addition of warning tracks to all major league parks.
Great schematics there, Sq. Peg. They really give a picture of how deep the original center field was. That was nuts. Even with the monuments way back deeper than a fielder would be likely to be chasing a fly, I have a feeling that today the Players' Assn. would raise strong objections to having anything like that on the field of play at a major league park. Times do change. Lots of great bits of history on this thread.
The reason I separate the Babe from every ballplayer that played is when he hit his 29 home runs in 1919, that was more than any TEAM in either laegue, and then he goes to 54 the next year and 59 in 1921. IMO that stat says more about why Babe Ruth is the greatest player in the history of baseball.
I agree. Prior to Ruth, Frank "Homerun" Baker was considered the power hitter of the league. He led the league in homers for 4 consectutive years (1911-1914) His highest total was 12 in 1913 and his career total is 96!
Here's a nice little blog that contains a lot of info and old photos. Scroll down a little until you come to Thurman Munson's locker. Then enjoy the ride.
I am a red sox fan going back to Fisk, Yaz, Tiant, Carbo etc... and the rivalary was fun. I always wanted Fisk to out do Thurman Munsun, but he was an engima or something like it. He was like plain old four door car that always performed well.
I read Gehrigs bio every year as a boy, I never saw him play but it was like watching games on the radio,because I saw something that was real.
I will talk smack about the yankees on another day, but this is sad day even for current great ones like Jeter, I am glad that he been able to play so many years in the old staduim.
Location: When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic
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The Clean up begins at Yankees !!!
NorthJersey.com: Yanks' third-base coach out (http://www.northjersey.com/sports/Yanks_third-base_coach_out.html - broken link)
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The Clean up begins at Yankees !!!
