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| Apr-16-11 | | Jim Bartle: Great video of the 1955 World Series. Near the beginning Jackie Robinson hits a drive to left center, and it looks as if Snider is playing way too shallow in center. But as he runs back I see the "457" sign on the wall, so it was just an illusion. |
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Apr-16-11
 | | Phony Benoni: That was Irv Noren in center field:
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... Was Mantle hurt? Except for a couple of pinch hitting appearances in a final day doubleheader, he missed the last week of the season. In the Series, he started only two games and pinch-hit in game 7. Most of the time, Stengel platooned Noren and Bob Cerv in center. |
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Apr-16-11
| | Phony Benoni: Apparently so:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NS... I may have to download the Baseball Digest issues available through Google Books. A gold mine! |
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| Apr-16-11 | | Jim Bartle: Whoa! I not only got the name of the centerfielder wrong, I got the wrong team! The point remains the same, though: 457 feet to left center, the main reason DiMaggio hit fewer than 400 home runs, I'm sure. |
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| Apr-16-11 | | Jim Bartle: That Baseball Digest story on pitching streaks discusses Hershiser's and Drysdale's scoreless inning streaks, and the ump not allowing a hit-by-pitch to end the streak against the Giants. I was watching that game on TV, and Dietz simply stood there and let the ball hit him, or even leaned into it a little. A good call. But the Giants still had the bases loaded with no outs, and still didn't score. |
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Apr-17-11
 | | perfidious: <Jim Bartle: The point remains the same, though: 457 feet to left center, the main reason DiMaggio hit fewer than 400 home runs, I'm sure.> I've never doubted this was the case-playing half his games in a real stadium, he might well have hit 500. Had he played in Sportsman's Park or Baker Bowl, I have no doubt he'd have got there. |
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| Apr-17-11 | | Jim Bartle: DiMaggio hit 148 homers in Yankee Stadium, 213 on the road. So it would seem he lost 60-70 homers by playing in such a tough park. |
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Apr-17-11
| | Phony Benoni: Looking at this in too much detail:
In Yankee Stadium DiMaggio had 148 HRs in 3360 ABs. That's one home run every 22.70 ABs. Here are similar figures in other stadiums: St. Louis 507 AB/45 HR = 11.27
Chicago 483/30 = 16.10
Boston 476/29 = 16.41
Washington 495/30 = 16.50
Detroit 518/30 = 17.27
Philadelphia 481/27 = 17.81
Cleveland 501/22 = 22.77.
As <perfidious> surmised, Sportsman Park in St. Louis was good for DiMaggio. Now, let's take this a little further and figure out how many additional home runs DiMaggio would have in each stadium had he played half of his games there rather than just one-seventh. However, we also have to subtract 6/7s of the 148 he actually hit at Yankee Stadium. Final figures: St. Louis 481
Chicago 413
Boston 410
Washington 408
Detroit 399
Philadelphia 396
Cleveland 360
If anything, these figures might be a little high because (a) Teams would be more likely to pitch around DiMaggio if he did not have the protection of the Yankees line-up; (b) DiMaggio would have to face the Yankee pitching staff 22 times each year instead of the Browns'; (c) DiMaggio would probably have fewer ABs overall since the Browns' lineup would turn over less often than the Yankees'. On the other hand, he would probably get more ABs at home in the bottom of the ninth since the Browns would be more likely to be behind. Not much consolation. (That 399 in Detroit is interesting, since it's the exact number Al Kaline hit.) |
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Apr-18-11
| | perfidious: <Phony Benoni: In Yankee Stadium DiMaggio had 148 HRs in 3360 ABs. That's one home run every 22.70 ABs. Here are similar figures in other stadiums: St. Louis 507 AB/45 HR = 11.27
Chicago 483/30 = 16.10
Boston 476/29 = 16.41
Washington 495/30 = 16.50
Detroit 518/30 = 17.27
Philadelphia 481/27 = 17.81
Cleveland 501/22 = 22.77.
Now, let's take this a little further and figure out how many additional home runs DiMaggio would have in each stadium had he played half of his games there rather than just one-seventh. However, we also have to subtract 6/7s of the 148 he actually hit at Yankee Stadium. Final figures: St. Louis 481
Chicago 413
Boston 410
Washington 408
Detroit 399
Philadelphia 396
Cleveland 360>
It's surprising to see Memorial Stadium so much worse than any other-then again, after Indians started playing home games outside League Park after 1931, their batting numbers dropped and the pitchers' stats conversely improved. It's also difficult to believe that Comiskey and Griffith rate so well here-no White Sox player won a HR crown until Bill Melton in 1971 (with 32), and it's well known that Goose Goslin, a man who could hit a little, had one season in Washington with 17 HRs, all of which were hit on the road. |
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| Apr-18-11 | | Jim Bartle: On the level of anecdote, I went to one night game at Municipal Stadium in the 80s, and the air was cold and seemingly dead. I couldn't see a ball flying unimpeded through that air. There were five extra-base hits in the game, all doubles. http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... |
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Apr-18-11
| | Phony Benoni: <perfidious> Well, DiMaggio was facing the White Sox and Senators pitching staffs. But outside of St. Louis on one end and New York/Cleveland on the others, his numbers in the other five stadiums are quite consistent. The Goslin phenomenon may be partially explained by The Green Monster. No, not the one in Fenway; Griffith Stadium had a 30' wall in right field to block the view from neighboring apartment buildings. Goslin was left-handed, and surely lost a number of home runs that way. In the 1920s, the dimensions were huge all around, at least 400' to the closest wall in left center. Goslin had the only home run at Griffith by a Senators player for their World Series championship team in 1924. Later, an interior wall was added in left to shorten the distance, which may explain why DiMaggio did OK there. Didn't Memorial Stadium have a capacity of over 70,000? I can imagine it getting cavernous a lot of nights. |
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| Apr-18-11 | | Jim Bartle: You mean Cleveland Memorial Stadium, the one I called Municipal Stadium? Yes, it was huge, with a massive and largely empty second deck. Attendance the night I went was about 25,000, and the stadium didn't feel empty as long as you didn't think about the upper deck. |
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Apr-18-11
| | perfidious: <PhonyBenoni> Are you familiar with the monstrous HR Mantle hit (right-handed) off Chuck Stobbs at Griffith in 1952? One source I've read claims this travelled 565 feet, but a co-worker says the distance was supposedly 510. Quite a shot either way. |
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| Apr-18-11 | | Jim Bartle: How long was Reggie Jackson's homer at the all-star game in Detroit supposed to have gone,had it not hit the light tower? I've probably said this before, but the longest I ever saw was Jack Clark in an exhibition game against Stanford in 1983 or so. At least a hundred feet over the elevated area beyond the centerfield fence. That's longest in a game. Before the game some of the Giants hit with Stanford's aluminum bats and balls were going into orbit. |
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Apr-18-11
| | Phony Benoni: Mantle's 565 feet was "measured" by a publicity man for the Yankees, and thus may have been somewhat exaggerated. It got some extra distance from hitting the back wall of the bleachers. Here's what Mantle himself thought about it: http://books.google.com/books?id=0C... I can't find an estimate on Jackson's shot, but it was about 365 feet to the fence, the stands were about 100' high, and the ball was still rising when it hit the middle of a huge light tower atop the stands. I don't think they make tape measures that long. |
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Apr-18-11
| | perfidious: <JimB> At about that time, I was at Fenway when Tony Armas Sr hit one that was still rising when it hit the lights on the second light tower in left-centre. That one might have made the Mass Pike anyway, and is the longest I've seen. As to Jackson's bomb, I've never seen any figure cited. |
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| Apr-18-11 | | Jim Bartle: Two consecutiv "still rising" sightings. That's certainly an optical illusion. A ball still rising at 365 ft. would have to go at least 700 ft. |
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Apr-18-11
| | Phony Benoni: That's probably right; I'm not sure of the trig involved. But some physicists at Wayne State University here in Detroit estimated 650 feet, and you can't argue with Cyclotron U. http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/... OK, I'm a Wayne State alumni. Maybe I'm prejudiced.
Unfortunately, Major League Baseball seems to have a monopoly on old highlights, and it's hard to find one for free. |
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| Apr-18-11 | | Jim Bartle: In general a ball will reach its highest point at the halfway point of the flight. Maybe a little bit farther given air pressure and whatever. 650 feet does sound reasonable for the Jackson homer. |
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Apr-19-11
| | perfidious: Since I went to this game, long ago, I've wondered whether Elias Sports Bureau keeps track of such esoteric stats as the highest number of unearned runs allowed in a game by one team, plus the fact that all sixteen of Mets' runs were unearned:
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... |
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Apr-19-11
| | Phony Benoni: <perfidious> I'm sure they do; there are a lot of statistics weirder than most unearned runs in a game. While looking around, I ran into this blog: http://reconditebaseball.blogspot.c... I've read a few of the posts, and this is going to get bookmarked. Fascinating atuff! |
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| Apr-19-11 | | Jim Bartle: That's a heck of a box score, in the Astros pitching chart: R 16 ER 0. I see diPino pitched a third of an inning, gave up two hits, two walks and six runs, but none earned. Now here's a question for the experts here: Do you always know whether a run is earned at the time it's scored, or can that depend on what happens afterward? I think you do, but I'm not sure. (I'm not counting changes in hit/error scoring; that's obvious.) |
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Apr-19-11
| | Phony Benoni: <Jim Bartle> Actually, it's possible not to know at the time if a run is earned. Errors and passed balls contribute to a run being unearned. Now suppose a team has a runner on third base with two outs, and a passed ball allows the run to score. If the batter makes an out, then the run is unearned; however, if he gets a hit and the runner would have scored anyway, it becomes an earned run. Wikipedia does a good job of explaining this, along with the rare situation where the pitcher is charged with an earned run but the team is not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned... |
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| Apr-19-11 | | YouRang: <Jim Bartle><Now here's a question for the experts here: Do you always know whether a run is earned at the time it's scored, or can that depend on what happens afterward?> It seems to me that I have a recollection, while listening to a radio game broadcast on the radio, that the announcer made a comment like: "The scorer has changed the that play back in the 5th inning from a error to a hit." |
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| Apr-19-11 | | Jim Bartle: I'm surprised to learn a run isn't necessarily earned or unearned when it's scored. YouRang: Yes, this happens pretty often, and often changes whether a run or runs is earned. Less often, fortunately, a player will call the official scorer during a game to complain, either that his error should have been a hit, or the ball he hit should have been a hit, not an error. I remember Wade Boggs doing this after being charged with an error. |
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