Where I disagree is in whether the rules should be adapted to suit changing times, or if the Commish should have ever-increasing powers to waive them.

Essentially, for stadium dimensions today, we can see that they’re not restrained by what’s in the rules, they’re restrained only by what Selig’s willing to sign off on. What Selig is willing to sign off on is unknown, and because of that, there’s a huge area for interpretation.

If the Tigers wanted to build a new park next year, for some reason, hoping to put the RF wall only 315 feet away at the corner, and Selig denied it, suddenly there are other factors we’d be discussing: is he angry that the Tigers broke slotting to draft and sign Miller, in particular?

This isn’t an isolated case, either – over Selig’s reign, the MLB head office has accumulated a huge amount of discretionary money and power that they use to reward friends and punish maverick ownership groups, and I don’t see that that’s healthy.

What changed? Obviously I can’t answer that with any inside knowledge, but how about I postulate a bit? Camden Yards was hailed as a testament to what a ballpark could be. A new era of ballparks was heralded and Camden set the standard for this new generation of, in my opinion, spectacular ballparks. This standard wasn’t set by Selig, he wasn’t Commissioner yet.

Why did they leave it in? Again, I can only postulate, but if the commissioners office (3 in the last 20+ years) have been willing to bend the rule then what good does it do to remove it. Its been utilized as a guideline and rewriting for posterity’s sake just seems meaningless, as the precendent is clear.

While its more than fair to say Selig has taken this to unforseen new heights, isn’t a more likely scenario simply that having odd dimension has become a bit of a fad in ballpark building? While it violates the letter of the law, the Commissioners Office, not just Selig himself, has decided that certain degrees of deviation from the letter of the law do not violate the spirit of the law, and thus no harm is done to the game.

I enjoy your blog and commend you on engaging your commentors.

Here’s my question – you clearly think that 265′ is too close. At some point, baseball thought that the current dimensions outlined in the rulebook were as close as you should be able to build a field, and implemented this rule to prevent parks from being built closer than what’s laid out.

What changed between then and now?
Why did baseball leave the requirement and allow the Commissioner to waive it, rather than change it?

I’ll talk about why this kind of Commissioner power is concerning in a later post.

This rule (a footnote to official rule 1.04) was passed specifically in response to the fence at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which was not originally designed for baseball, and thus was only 251 feet (77 m) to the left field pole (1 foot (0.3 m) over the bare minimum required by the rules).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball

Focus on the RUNS column. Houston has 0.68 more runs (per 9IP) scored at their home games than their road games. That puts them in the top third.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor