MACK PARK: Friend or Foe?

Ballparks are not uniform in baseball. Each one has unique dimensions and can be either a friend of Pitcher and foe of the batter, or vice versa. And beyond that, they can be friendly to RH batters, or LH batters, or both, or neither. Over the last decade, we’ve been continually building a “Negro Leagues […]

ESTIMATING PARK FACTORS FOR THE NEGRO LEAGUES

Most serious baseball fans understand that ballparks can have a large impact on statistical performance. However, trying to measure that exact impact often proves difficult. In work we’ve done on Major League ballparks at Seamheads.com, it takes about three full years of data, regressed by about one additional season worth of games, to get a […]

THE BALLPARK CHRONICLES

Soon a new version of the classic ballpark book “Green Cathedrals” will be issued by SABR (Society for American Baseball Research). After having researched over 400 specific Blackball parks for the updated book, here are a few interesting ballpark facts I discovered. Philadelphia Mysteries Pencoyd Park was the home of the 1928 Philadelphia Tigers of […]

A Weekend in the Colonies

My wife’s Uncle Leo never left the comforts of Brooklyn except on rare occasions. His world began in Bensonhurst and extended no further than an occasional trip to Atlantic City. When my wife and I got married in Atlanta in 1982, Uncle Leo flew into Hartsfield International where I met him as he left the […]

Ballparks Database Updated!

The Seamheads.com Ballparks Database has now been updated with 2011 data plus the latest and greatest corrections. As a reminder, we provide two sets of calculations: 1-year factors and 3-year factors. The 1-year factors are observed factors, based on only the season in question.  While we do use an other parks corrector as described in the […]

The Milwaukee Brewers Once Famous Mascot

Most ballparks now have mascots. But how many have a real live animal mascot? Perhaps the oddest I came across were the 1902 proposed mascots for the Denver and Colorado Springs teams: a live Grizzly Bear and a live Mountain Lion. Other Western League owners frowned on the idea and the bear remained the pet […]

Graham Knight: The Ballpark Connoisseur

With all due respect, the best way I can describe Graham Knights’ website, http://www.baseballpilgrimages.com, is to call it “baseball porn.” It is a feast for the eyes and the senses, glorifying baseball and its stadiums. If you are a baseball fan and haven’t visited it before, you are missing out. The site is a shrine […]

Yakima Bears Hope to Fill Void Left by Beavers

Baseball fans in the Portland, OR area saw their beloved Beavers head south last year for warmer pastures, but the metro-area may not go very long without a professional baseball team. As has been reported, the Yakima Bears (Single A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks) are hopeful a planned and expected move to Vancouver, WA […]

Rave Reviews for Newest Can-Am Stadium For the Rockland Boulders

The consensus seemed unanimous. The Can-Am League’s new Rockland (NY) Boulders have a winner in $38 million Provident Bank Park, which opened—and appeared virtually completed—to a sold out crowd Thursday night. A 6,000-seat facility only an hour or so north of New York City it has all the amenities any new stadium should have plus […]

Visiting Louisville, and Pleased

Visiting the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory along with attending a home game of the Louisville Bats has been on my to do list for several years. Purchasing a pair of tickets the day they went on sale for my wife Lynne and I for Monday April 11, our plans were set. Heading into to […]

FEATURES OF THE BALLPARKS DATABASE

Besides the basic field dimensions and batting event factors, there are some other features of the ballparks database that I’d like to highlight: Starting with the index page, you’ll see that the default order is number of games played in the stadium.   Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are at the top.   This can be an […]

Seamheads.com Boasts Most Comprehensive Ballparks Database on the Internet

We at Seamheads.com are proud to announce the launch of the new Seamheads.com Ballparks Database, created by Seamheads.com co-founder Kevin Johnson and designed for the Internet by Dan Hirsch, fellow Seamhead and founder of TheBaseballGauge.com. This database has been a long time coming and something Kevin and I have wanted to implement since the earliest […]

Talking With Jack Perconte About Comiskey Park, Municipal Stadium, and the Kingdome

Last year I looked up the story of the first game at the original Comiskey Park on July 1, 1910. Months later I talked with Jack Perconte about his time playing for the Mariners in the mid-’80s to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Kingdome’s implosion this March. I realized that Jack closed his career […]

Meet the new Park Factors — Part III

Taming the Wind “This will be one of the most beautiful baseball parks of all time.”—Vice President Richard Nixon, 1960, opening day at Candlestick Park So many were fooled. Players, sports writers, and even future presidents were in awe of the new home of the San Francisco Giants. Mesmerizing visitors with its lush green grass […]

Meet the New Park Factors – Part II

[In Part I, we saw that traditional Park Factors do have a place in baseball—just not for measuring ballpark impact. In Part II here, we’ll mix some physics with home run trajectories to help us understand how a future system for rating ballparks might be designed. In Part III, we’ll see what this system might […]

Naming Wrongs

Shortly after I started working at the Hall of Fame library, I discovered a wonderful book published in the 1990s by Peter Filichia, titled Professional Baseball Franchises. It lists every minor-league team from the 1880s forward, including nicknames, league affiliations, classifications, renamings, and years of existence. It is indispensable for locating where people played, which […]

Ballpark Analysis

Back in July, we announced the latest and greatest version of the Seamheads Ballpark Database (see: http://seamheads.com/blog/2009/07/02/the-seamheads-ballparks-database-is-here/).  We also promised we would eventually begin publishing a series of analytical articles that would use the data from the Ballparks Database to investigate various questions, along the lines of what we had previously done in this article […]

The Top 40 Pitchers of the 20th Century

Bill James’ WIN SHARES system is the ultimate baseball statistic currently available to judge exactly how good a season a player had. That is the view of Dr. Michael Hoban -retired mathematics professor and serious baseball analyst. And that is why the professor has used WIN SHARES in his new book to create a new […]

The Top 100 Position Players of the 20th Century

Bill James’ WIN SHARES system is the ultimate baseball statistic currently available to judge exactly how good a season a player had. That is the view of Dr. Michael Hoban -retired mathematics professor and serious baseball analyst. And that is why the professor has used WIN SHARES in his new book to create a new […]