Great show!

Ornstein & Smo & Krill !!!

So you probably know that Boston is NOT on a grid. In fact many of the roads follow old cattle paths or new shorelines as the buildable land was expanded into the late 1800s. Fast forward a few decades and Boston wants to build a baseball stadium but there isn’t a lot of room… no problem! Well just build a giant wall in left field and it’ll all come out in the wash! So now Fenway looks like this:

So that adds… weirdness generally but it also turns many doubles into singles, home runs into outs, and some of the other corners turn singles into home runs. And whoever is playing LF needs to ‘play the wall’ as they say. Bc the ball bounces off the wall, you gotta take that into account when positioning. Apparently routine catches aren’t YouTube video worthy lol so I couldn’t really find a video besides this one (which is another short so sorry if you can’t see it!) youtube.com/shorts/enCktNoC4TU

Ah yeah that makes sense. It’s also probably easier to have consistent football fields bc they are a rectangle.

Ikr!!

Hehe thanks! 2 down, 28 to go!

Haha naturally. Wack that they chose to just… ignore an entire aspect of the place they play 50% of the games…

That’s crazy, it’s like a whole other mechanic of the game that is only relevant in one park! Kinda like Fenway with the Green Monster but that’s only relevant to one position lol.

The parks are so cool tho bc I don’t think other sports have such differences in the parks. Like a football field is a football field is a football field l, ya know? (please correct me if that is not true of your football. Is it called a pitch?) But Fenway is so different from Coors is so different from Wriggly. Fun fact the Astro’s park used to have a HILL in center field. And the Yankees, many many years ago, had STATUES in center.

I kinda want to see a game in every stadium but we shall see if that ever comes to be lol

Very true that the Rockies are tied to their park in ways that other teams are not! Like the Rays’ park recently caved in during a hurricane but no one is that sad about it bc that park was kinda bad (allegedly) and it wasn’t intrinsic to the team’s identity. They had a sting ray tank tho which is cool (there was a net to protect them from fly balls, fret not) but a Rocky that doesn’t live in the Rockies would be silly!

Oh my gosh bc there is less air to push against? That’s kinda crazy! Y’all must have to take that into account when you pick pitchers. A tricksy pitcher throwing mostly curveballs and cutters would have a harder time than a speed demon. Lorenzen does seem to have his fastball as his primary pitch so that’s probably good for him.

Heheh yeah it’s usually easier to just say Boston lol

Heheh it’ll be a great series either way :p I’m excited to see the Sox play in Coors! We have a power hitter or two that could hit one heck of a homer

I live in Cambridge which is technically not Boston but it’s a 10 minute walk to Boston proper so not that separate lol

Haha indeed! I wonder if we’ll get some funky strategies from the countries that don’t play that much

Yup! They changed the scheduling a bit in 2023 to make sure every team plays every other team. I think it alternates on the year who is the host team. So the Sox will play the Rockies at Coors in late June this season :D

Oooooooooo huh that’s a good question idk. I would guess it’s decided to minimize travel but still give each team different opponents. I can imagine the undertaking it is to schedule and coordinate all these games.

I just googled the schedule and it looks like there are some funky games too lol. The Sox play a college team and the Rockies play the “United States”.

Which lead me to the knowledge that baseball is coming back to the Olympics in 2028! Also known as: Japan v United States and also the other guys.

Yeah that’ll be v exciting! Having a new guy to be hopeful about is so key.

Mostly it’s whoever the manager thinks needs the time. Of course, pitch count is still considered and catchers need breaks, but other than that it’s about getting as many guys as much time as they want/need. For example the Sox have some big prospects, one of whom is Christian Campbell. We saw a bit of him last year but he wasn’t really able to keep up with big league pitching so I expect we’ll see a bunch of him in spring training to give him as many opportunities as possible before the season starts.