Re: "tape measure " home runs

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 15:28 10/26/00 -0400, you wrote:
> Does anyone know how home runs are measured?  There seems to be to some
> debate about different measuring techniques in the American and National
> leagues, is this true?
>
> Thanks for any clarification.
> dave

Disclaimer: I have witnessed one game - a home game of the Redsox
from near home base - and it was excellent.

I need to explain that my quondam library objective was modest
 - to avoid the frustration of having no reference in some
personal fields of interest by obtaining a representative sample
 of relevant texts.

   But my wife is less tolerant of my impatience, and more capable
of finding the means to avoid it, so she provides me with encyclopedic
references of many kinds. In my own defense, I add that I assume an
obligation to share such material as I can, while I still possess it.

Anyway:
Homerun: apart from the hit to the distant outfield....
a flyball hit over a boundary fence that is more than 250 ft from
 home base and in fair territory. (1)

A second reference offers in addition: over the fence line in foul
territory and defines this line as greater than 60 ft from base or
foul line. (2)

There is evidently some room for interpretation - where fields
have their own peculiarities.

I suppose that like squash, one could point to the informal
 English game ('rounders') of the 19th century - played still
only by children there in an unwritten tradition - but baseball is
considerably more codified than that impromptu pass time.

Refs:
(1) "Rules of the Game" Midgley/Wilkinson  Diagram/Paddington Press

(2) Encyclopedia of Sports   Menke   Barnes Press


























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>  Altus OK
                Eureka!