2.00: The Playing Field
At first appearance, all the rules pertaining to the shape and size of the playing field have changed appreciably since Cartwright’s day, except for one: The bases are still 90 feet apart. Nothing was actually said about the distance between bases in the first formal code of playing rules that Cartwright drafted in 1845; the sole stipulation was that the stretch of ground from home to second base and from first to third base should be the same 42 paces. Since a pace for an athletic man walking briskly is roughly a yard, that worked out to be about 126 feet, or only a foot and a third short of the present distance between home and second base.
Historian Frederick Ivor-Campbell speculated that Cartwright chose paces for the sake of simplicity. An empty stretch of ground can be converted into a ball diamond in a few seconds if the distances between home and second and between first and third are stepped off, whereas using a yardstick or a tape measure takes considerably longer. Ivor-Campbell also theorized that Cartwright might have preferred 42 paces to 42 yards because it produced bases for players at a distance fit for their legs. As a result, children or women pacing out a diamond will naturally come up with shorter basepaths than adult men, resulting in a game more closely suited to their physical dimensions.
No one really knows the thinking of the game’s early designers—the bases could as easily have been 80 or 100 feet apart and still would have allowed the playing field to retain its diamond shape—but sportswriter Red Smith once said, “Ninety feet between bases is the nearest to perfection that man has yet achieved.” In addition, others have pointed out that while every other significant feature of the geometry of the playing field has changed since Cartwright’s day, the 90-foot distance has remained a constant. In truth, however, the distances today between bases are less than 90 feet. The way the bases are situated now, the distance from the edge of home plate to the edge of first base is about 88 feet; from first to second and second to third, 88½ feet; and from third to home, 88 feet. Prior to 1900, when the shape of the plate changed, the distances were different still, depending on alterations in the size and positioning of bases.
For many years after Union Grounds—the first enclosed baseball field—was constructed in May 1862 in Brooklyn so that admission could be charged, there was no minimum distance an outside-the-park home run had to travel. The Chicago White Stockings, for instance, played in Lakefront Park in the early 1880s, with a left-field power alley only 280 feet from the plate and a right-field barrier just 196 feet down the line. The park rule called for all balls hit over the short fences to be ground-rule doubles in every season except 1884, when they were designated home runs. That season the bandbox park helped the White Stockings to hit 142 home runs and the club’s third sacker Ned Williamson to collect 27 dingers. These specious marks stood as team and individual major-league season records until the arrival of Babe Ruth. In 1885, the National League mandated that all balls hit over fences in parks that were less than 210 feet from the plate were ground-rule doubles . . . so the White Stockings unveiled a new park, West Side Park, which was more classically shaped for its time
Ned Williamson’s specious 27 home runs in 1884 helped produce a .554 slugging average, the highest season mark prior to 1923 by a qualifier with a sub-.300 batting average. Library of Congress
By the 1890s, fences in major-league parks were required to be at least 235 feet from the plate. In 1892, the National League deemed that any ball hit over a barrier less than 235 feet from home was a ground-rule double. The minimum distance for an automatic home run was lengthened in 1926 to 250 feet and remained at that figure until 1958 (when the relocated Dodgers franchise was forced to play in the quirky Los Angeles Coliseum, expressly designed for football, until their new park in Chavez Ravine was ready), but clubs were urged, whenever the neighborhood surrounding the park made it possible, to erect their fences at least 300 feet away from the plate.
Several parks extant in 1926 barely met the 250-foot minimum. The Polo Grounds, home of the New York Giants (for a time the New York Yankees and later the New York Mets’ first domicile), was a mere 257½ feet down the right-field line and just 279 feet to the left-field foul pole. Baker Bowl, the Philadelphia Phillies’ home until 1938, had a right-field fence only 280½ feet away. In contrast, Boston Braves hitters in 1926 were daunted by a left-field wall at Braves Field that was 403 feet from the plate at its shortest point. As could be expected, the Braves rapped just 16 circuit clouts that year, the fewest in the majors and 31 less than Babe Ruth hit all by himself.
Most followers of the game are aware that to promote it worldwide in recent years, official major-league contests on occasion are being played in parks smaller than required by the rules. In 2019, the Yankees and Red Sox played two regular-season games at London Stadium in London, England. The park has artifical turf and served up a feast for home run lovers. Measuring only 385 feet to dead center, the park yielded 50 runs in the two-game set and a total of 10 home runs.
One might inquire why home base is called home plate. The reasonable assumption is that it must originally have been shaped like a dish, and this is borne out by history. In all the early forms of baseball, home base was round and in casual games was fashioned out of whatever circular device was handy—including a dish or even a player’s cap. In 1869, the circular shape was abandoned and home base became a 12-inch square, usually made of white marble or stone. The square was set in the ground so that one corner pointed toward the pitcher’s box and its opposite corner toward the catcher’s customary station. The pitcher’s and catcher’s positions were thereupon called “the points.” Not until 1877, however, was home plate permanently set entirely in fair territory. The previous two seasons—the last two in which fair-foul hits were legal—the plate was entirely in foul territory.
In 1885, to spare the possibility of injuries to runners sliding home, the American Association stipulated that home base could no longer be stone but rather made of white rubber. Two years later, the National League added the same proviso to its rule manual, but home base remained a square until 1900. The later change of converting the plate to a pentagonal shape made it easier for umpires to pinpoint the strike zone and also gave pitchers a huge boost. The larger, 17-inch five-sided plate, plus the adoption of the foul-strike rule in 1901 by the National League (with the American League following suit two years later), contributed heavily to the sharp decline in offense that gripped the game from the early part of the twentieth century to the end of World War I, causing it to be dubbed “The Deadball Era.”
The feature of the playing field that has undergone the most drastic change since the first game played by the Cartwright rules is the pitching station. As late as 1880, pitchers hurled from a rectangular box, the forward line of which was only 45 feet from home plate. A pitcher was required to release the ball either on or behind the forward line, and was not allowed to advance beyond it after the ball left his hand. After the National League loop batting average dipped to .245 in 1880, and the Chicago White Stockings ran away with the pennant—winning by a 15-game margin with a schedule that called for just 84 league games—the pitcher’s box was moved back five feet to generate more offense. In 1881, though the White Stockings still romped to an easy repeat pennant, the league average jumped 15 points to .260.
Eleven years later, despite a flock of rule changes in 1887 that lengthened the pitching distance by half a foot and compelled many pitchers to radically alter their deliveries to conform to the prototype then in effect, the pendulum had swung the other way again and offense was back to its 1880 level. As such, another radical change was needed to restore a balance between hitters and pitchers as the NL average once again plummeted to .245, and stars such as Cap Anson (.272), Mike “King” Kelly (.189), and Jake Beckley (.236) all hit well below .300. With runs at a premium, the Rules Committee once more moved the pitching distance farther from the plate. One faux tale is that the present 60-feet, 6-inch distance resulted from an error made by a surveyor who misread the 60-feet written on the blueprint as 60-feet, 6 inches, and laid out the first pitcher’s plates accordingly before the 1893 season. In truth, the Rules Committee carefully calculated the new pitching distance. Although required to release the ball at a point 60-feet, 6 inches from the plate, the typical hurler, after taking the one forward step he was permitted, finished his delivery with his front foot about 55 feet from home base or only five feet farther away from the batter than the forward line had been in 1892. Hence the pitching distance actually increased only about five feet rather than 10½ feet, as it must otherwise seem.
Once the 50-foot pitching distance went the way of the one-bounce out and the fair-foul rule in 1893, many pitchers who fashioned outstanding stats before the distance was increased were immediately impacted when they had to add “legs” to their sharp-breaking curves and keep their back foot anchored to a rubber plate as they released the ball. But probably none was made more miserable than Charles Leander Jones, known as “Bumpus.” After winning 27 games in the minors earlier in the year, Bumpus Jones was purchased by the Cincinnati Reds in time to hurl the closing contest of the 1892 season. His first game in the majors coincided with the final day that pitchers threw from a rectangular box just 50 feet from the plate. On October 15, 1892, Bumpus Jones, in the process of launching his career, ushered out the old pitching distance with a feat that has never been duplicated. He twirled a complete game no-hitter in his initial major-league contest, beating Pittsburgh Pirates, 7–1.
Still aglow, Jones reported for spring training with the Reds in 1893, only to find that he would now have to fasten his pivot foot to a rubber plate 60-feet-6-inches from the plate. The transition was beyond him. Seven appearances into the 1893 season, Jones toted a 10.19 ERA, prompting his release. He was never again seen by a major-league audience.
In sharp contrast to the following diagram showing the current layout of the pitching mound are drawings and photographs of the playing field prior to 1893. The pitcher’s boxes are flat in all of them but were in actuality elevated, if only just slightly, even by then in most parks.
The National League rule book first addressed uniformity in players’ benches prior to the 1882 season, requiring the home club to place two benches 12 feet long and fastened to the ground on either side of the field outside the playing lines. Adjacent to each bench had to be a bat rack, big enough to hold at least twenty bats.
Remarkably, the term “dugout” did not first appear in the manuals until 1950, when the entire rule book was recodified and many features of the game that had slipped into existence without being given due recognition finally received formal acknowledgement. Dugouts had existed since 1909, when the first all concrete and steel stadiums were constructed in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia; previously players sat at field level on benches that were enclosed in canvas to sequester them from spectators—although it did not shield spectators from hearing players rant and rave. Only the disingenuous brought their wives, mothers, or girlfriends to a game and chose seats within shouting distance of a team bench.
As late as 1895, reigning heavyweight champion Jim Corbett sat through a doubleheader on the Washington bench as a celebrity guest watching his brother Joe play shortstop and pitch for the National League Senators club. Beginning in 1896, only players in uniform, the manager, and the club president were allowed to occupy their team’s players’ bench during the course of a game. This is now been expanded to include coaches, of course, along with other personnel authorized by the league.
The new concrete and steel stadiums also contained the first dressing rooms for visiting teams. Before 1909, visiting clubs had changed at their hotels and then traveled by carriages to the ballpark in full uniform. Prior to 1889, exceptions were often made, allowing a visiting player to change clothes and shower in a home team’s dressing room if he happened to be from a city where his team was playing and staying at his family home rather than his team’s hotel. This commonplace courtesy ended abruptly on April 9, 1889, when Cleveland Spiders outfielder Bob Gilks, a Cincinnati native, traveled to the Queen City for a preseason exhibition game. Rather than dress at his home, he brought his uniform and spikes to the Reds’ park, as he was not traveling to the park with his Spiders teammates in the team carriage. Gilks was a gritty player—a master of the trap ball play but a weak batsman (as he was a sucker for wide curves that floated out of the strike zone). In the eighth inning of the game that afternoon, he reacted to brushback pitches from the Reds’ Tony Mullane by complaining they were intentional, but the reality was that he had hung his head far out over plate so he could reach Mullane’s wide sweeping curves. While changing in the clubhouse after the game, Gilks had more words with Mullane and came at him armed with a bat. The row dissolved into a savage fistfight between the two and resulted in severely curtailing the custom whereby players, who lived in a town their team was visiting, were allowed to dress in the home team’s clubhouse.
