Estimating Outfield Area.

I wrote something on this in 2010.  Here is the link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KGSEHIl17I98GrI01HNZxQkzUxyBZKbIMa80CfguetI/pub

It points to a spreadsheet that contains data for Yankee Stadium (1961 and 2009) and Fenway Park 2009.

It uses the basic formula of a circle from high school geometry: (pi) r2.

Why use the area for a circle?  Because a baseball field has foul lines that form a right angle.  If a baseball field was formed as it should be with the distance to outfield fences the same in all directions, its area in fair territory would be one fourth that of a full circle.

Some observations:

If my calculations are correct, CF in Yankee Stadium in 1961 had 41% more area than in 2009.

2009 distances for both Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park are from my use of the Google Earth Windows application.

Yankee Stadium 1961 distances are from my memory and I guessed at 380 feet in straight away left.  The marked distance of 402 at the left field bullpen gate is too far toward LC to be considered straight away left.

Joe DiMaggio was responsible for covering 116% more area than Ted Williams.  Joe also had 54% more area than his Red Sox brother Dom.

In Fenway Park RC is closer than R.  Because of the sharp increase of distance from RL to R, Fenway's RF area may be a bit underestimated.

The shocking thing to me was the large difference between CF and the corner positions and the relative lack of difference between one corner and another.