Ballpark Orientations

[Hammerin Hank]

Why do newer ballparks have homeplate facing north instead of east as they traditionally do?

[Bleacherbee]

I never even thought about it, but with the shadows as I remember them at Wrigley, doesnt it face north there as well?

[Hammerin Hank]

I never even thought about it, but with the shadows as I remember them at Wrigley, doesnt it face north there as well?

Homeplate at Wrigley faces northeast.

[Bleacherbee]

Homeplate at Wrigley faces northeast.

Yeah thats what I thought...
Tiger Stadium I believe was almost due north, Copa I think is pretty much south by southeast...

Where's the traditionally east facing home plates?

[Hammerin Hank]

You can see all of them here:

http://baseball-almanac.com/stadium/ballpark_NSEW_AL.shtml

http://baseball-almanac.com/stadium/ballpark_NSEW_NL.shtml

[Bleacherbee]

I'm confused as to the question then, only 3 of the new ballparks have due north orientations?

[Hammerin Hank]

Well, that's three more than there used to be.

[Bleacherbee]

No, the Skydome, Olympic, even Wrigley and Chavez are close enough

[Bleacherbee]

Also, Briggs was almost due north I'm pretty certain

[Hammerin Hank]

I was only looking at the current stadiums though and it looked like more of the newer ones were north than the older ballparks. I just wondered if there was a reason for this.

[64Cards]

Geographically Challenged

Around 2002, the Cards were still trying to get Mo. taxpayers to pay most of the cost of their new stadium. Disturbed by the citizenry's lack of enthusiasm for the project, the Cards went to the old extortion trick, claiming that Illinois was chomping at the bit to build them a new ballpark in the swamps of East St. Louis, despite a lack of infrastructure, terrible traffic problems across the bridges from Mo., not to mention the reaction that Chi-land voters would have to building a new ballpark for the ST. LOUIS Cardinals. Al Hrabosky, the color guy on the Cards tv broadcasts, nevertheless pimped hard for the home team. One afternoon, doing his call-in show on the local sports radio outlet,he mentioned that the previous evening he was coming back from Ill. after playing golf, around 8pm and said what an incredible view he had of the St. Louis skyline and sunset and thought it would be great to have our park there, our fans would just love seeing that every evening. A caller came on and told Al, that for obvious reasons, you can't have home plate facing the west and the St. Louis skyline. Al replied, "Well, they're getting so technically advanced now on these new parks I'm sure they can come up with something to take care of that."

[ballparks]

I could have sworn that home plate point just a couple of degrees of of north in every park. I can't say that it's by tradition or by influencing shadows, but that's a fact that's somewhere in my head.
???????

[Bluesteve32]

It is in the rule book!

In Rule 1.04, the third paragraph does say, "It is desirable that the line from home plate throught the pitchers plate shall run East-Northeast."

Most professional ballparks are laid in that manner.

[wamby]

In Cleveland, home plate at Jacobs Field faces to the NE. At Municipal Stadium, home faced due east. Based on pictures I've seen and a visit to the site, I believe that home plate at League Park faced to the NE.

[Gary Dunaier]

In Rule 1.04, the third paragraph does say, "It is desirable that the line from home plate throught the pitchers plate shall run East-Northeast."

Most professional ballparks are laid in that manner.

Of course, those rules were written before the advent of domed stadiums and indoor baseball. When you don't have to worry about the sun in your eyes it doesn't matter which way you're facing when you're at the plate, and I guess that's one of the few good things that can be said about domes.

(For whomever might want to be advised of such things: This is the first new post in this thread in almost two-and-a-half years.)