Fenway Park Wall

[The Reservoir Dog]

I am watching the highlights of the Yankees/Red Sox game this morning and have seen a couple of big hits go crashing into the high wall. On other fields these would have been home runs.

Shouldn't there be some sort of consistancy within the ball parks or surely there should be a line on the high wall where if it goes over it would be considerered a home run?

[gerald72]

No. Each park is unique.
The Green Monster is much closer to home plate than the left field wall at other stadiums, which is why it is higher.

[Strmchsr]

That's much of the charm of basepall parks. Every one is different. There's not even consistent measurements as to how far away the walls are in the outfields. The only thing required is the size of the diamond.

The outfield doesn't matter as it's the same for all hitters.

[Ian]

I have to admit that I've always found this sort of odd, as well. I mean baseball is the only sport that's played in venues that are totally different depending on where you are.

But at the end of the day, I'm okay with it because the teams get to make the choice. If you create a hitter-friendly park then it's also hitter-friendly for the visiting team and vice versa as far as pitcher-friendly parks.

It's still basically an even playing field and, given how quickly the typical roster turns over, it's not like it's simple to always tailor your teams skills to your particular park.

[Scar]

When Civil War General Abner Doubleday invented baseball (yes I know,) baseball was played in fields. If someone hit the ball over the outfielders (the guys out in the field,) it was most likely a home run anyway. When they started building ballparks in the cities, most had to fit into city blocks (like Fenway Park.) There was no way to regulate this, nor did they really care. As gerald72 said, The Green Monster is much closer than most other fences so they made it higher to compensate. Actually, if a batter is a deep pop up type hitter, it is easier to homer there than other parks, and conversely, many line drives off The Monster might be caught if the leftfielder was able to play deeper.

[indytraveler]

I'll go one step further. Back in the late 60's early 70's there was a push to design ballparks that were "cookie cutter". The Vet in Philly, Riverfront in Cincy, Busch in St. Louis, and 3 Rivers in Pittsburgh. All 4 of these fields were multipurpose with pretty much the same dimensions for baseball. This made for some pretty boring baseball watching on tv. No character at all in the ball parks. The old fields these replaced had some character, or quirks to them. This was the case until Baltimore built Camden Yards in the early to mid '90s. Then retro was the new "in". Only Wrigley and Fenway have lasted since the last turn of the century. This also lets the team decide what kind of team to have. You fit this with your home field so you gain the advantage.
Many teams have done this over the years...
St. Louis in the '80's was built on speed
Colorado in early years all power hitting
Cubs feature power hitters for their small ballpark
Yankees try to have power hitting lefties for right field.
Sometimes a ballpark is configured before you know what kind of team you want to have. See Detroit and Comerica. When opened it was a big pitchers ballpark. Problem was they paid Juan Gonzalez alot of money to play. Hit less than 30 HR's his first year in ballpark and wanted out (this was steroid era). So they moved the fences in 30 ft and made it in line with other symetrical fields.
So this is the charm of baseball. Dimensions and elements at each ballpark make it a special game.