Baseball fields from above

December 18, 2009

You know what I love about flying?

Looking out the window at all the baseball fields.

Like this…

Obviously it’s impossible to spot baseball fields from an altitude of 35,000 feet, but when the plane is only a few hundred or a few thousand feet high, I notice them everywhere. Check out the fields in the photo below, way off in the distance:

I took all these shots earlier this year while flying back home to New York City from Chicago.

Here are the baseball fields in Central Park; the red arrow is pointing to my bedroom window, more or less:

In case you can’t tell, the plane was heading north.

Do you know what sits several miles north of Central Park?

Yankee Stadiums: 

(Is it too late to restore the old one?)

Major league stadiums aside, I like to look at each field and analyze the surrounding area to see where a foul ball or home run might end up landing. In a parking lot? On a tennis court? A highway? An apartment complex? A body of water? Trees? (Am I the only one who does this?) Then I try to estimate the distance that a ball would have to travel in order to be a home run. I do this by figuring out where home plate is, figuring out where the base is, and then visualizing how many of those lengths (at 90 feet apiece) would be able to fit between home plate and the foul pole. (Did that make any sense?) Or I’ll look at the distance from home to second base and see how many of THOSE lengths (127 feet and change) would fit between home and the center field wall.

But what if there is no wall? Take a look at the cluster of four fields below:

You see the two bigger fields that are facing each other? I would estimate that if batters on each field hit a 275-foot fly ball to center, those balls would land in approximately the same spot. If there were good teams playing on those fields, you could have a situation where the two center fielders would actually be facing each other. (Once again, am I making any sense?)

Here are a few more fields:

It looks like the one next to the track would require a mammoth 200-foot blast for a home run. Do seven-year-olds play there? Or do grown-ups use that field and only give each other doubles when the ball clears the fence? And how about that baseball diamond embedded into the football field? Playing shortstop on the 20-yard line would either be really cool or really distracting. And then there’s the field on the upper right. Looks like you’d have to hit one about 350 feet to get it on top of that building down the left field line.

Here are some more fields:

Look at this one:

I always loved AstroTurf. It was the only time that I played to my full potential because I was never scared of taking a bad hop to the retina; I could get in front of the ball and play with perfect fundamentals.

Here’s one more photo. I probably took it in the Bronx. Or maybe Queens? I don’t remember which airport I was flying into.

That’s it. Just wanted to share this random baseballness.

Written by Zack Hample Posted in Dailies