For opening day this year, a brief review of baseball during the dead-ball era.
Before 1920, the same ball would be put into play with almost every pitch. Because the ball would become softer and more loosely-wrapped as the game went on, hitters choked up on the bat and specialized in placing their hits precisely around the field. Base stealing was also important.
Home runs of the long fly-ball variety were not common, and stadium dimensions were expansive. In 1908, it was 635 feet to center field at Boston's Huntington Avenue American League Baseball Grounds. When crowds were especially large, fans were seated behind ropes in the outfield.
Because the foul lines are rays extending from home plate, baseball will always possess an echo of mathematical infinitude. As Paul Goldberger points out in his recent New Yorker profile of the new stadiums in New York:
"A baseball outfield, technically, has no outer limits, just as a baseball game has no set time to end. The outfield stops where the stadium's builders decide it will stop. Urban ballparks had façades in front, to fit in with neighboring buildings, but were usually left low and open in the outfield, which had the effect of weaving the park into the neighborhood, so that, from the right place, you might catch an enticing glimpse of the green paradise within."
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