It’s hard to imagine any park looking quite like the one in which the Yankees played before the 1970s renovations. The dimensions were, by the modern standard, incomprehensible. Imagine you’re Alex Rodriguez and you hit one right on the sweet spot. It soars out to left-center and lands 390 feet from the plate — but is in the field of play.
(Or, better yet, imagine his 500th home run. That also would have been in the field of play, thanks to a 461-foot fence in center.)
True, the Yankees typically pound their homers to right. Back in the day the Stadium still had that short porch — it was actually a little shorter down the line, though it was a bit deeper in right-center — so it would have still played to the Yankees’ primary strength. But it’s hard to imagine the Yankees hitting many of their homers anywhere near right field.
Of course, there were righties who hit for power at Yankee Stadium. Joe DiMaggio led the league in home runs in 1937 while playing more than half of his game at Yankee Stadium. He hit 27 of his 46 homers on the road, sure, but that’s still 19 at home. He also produced a near .300 ISO at home, and an overall 1.061 OPS. Apparently that cavernous right field didn’t hold him back a bit.
...Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be room in today’s game for a park as oddly shaped as the old Yankee Stadium. Which is a shame. Sure, it might be difficult to lure pull-heavy right handed power hitters, but it’s not as though the Yankees attract, or even seek, many of them anyway. (A-Rod, for example, had superb opposite-field power). I’d love to see modern teams play in a Stadium like that.
Repoz
Posted: August 03, 2012 at 01:31 PM |
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1. Steve Treder Posted: August 03, 2012 at 02:04 PM (#4199859)No, I've read multiple places that DiMaggio was a dead pull hitter, and that most of the HRs he hit in Yankee Stadium were right down the line, which was only 318 feet. Left-center at home was where he hit all those triples, and yes, he likely hit more than a few inside-the-parkers.
Edit: Coke to McCoy
You mean like now? It's 399 to left center and 408 to center.
That was also, almost exactly, two years ago and A-Rod has hit 44 since. Not a record-breaking pace, I suspect.
Until 1973, the monuments were in the field of play. Bringing that back might be cool.
Um, no. The Polo Grounds.
They built the Polo Grounds for baseball!
Precisely. A sport never intended to be played in a big oval.
It was just a weird, weird stadium. If it hadn't existed, and a writer of historical fiction imagined it, that writer would be hooted down as having no clue about baseball parks.
I still wish that the Marlins ballpark had been built in a shape similar to the Polo Grounds, sort of echoing the Orange Bowl. (I'm not sure you could have done it strictly over the same footprint for sun reasons, but it would have been fun.)
Indeed, but as noted in a prior thread, MLB rules prohibit new ballparks from having the foul poles that close to home plate.
What you're describing -- foul poles well under 300 feet away -- would go far beyond the usual exemption, no?
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