Baseball Hacks

Find Images of Stadiums

Unlike most other sports, baseball fields are not uniform. Old parks like Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and Yankee Stadium have short outfield walls and kinky corners where balls get lost. Here’s an easy way to get an aerial view.

The easiest way to look at stadiums is through Google Maps (http://maps.google.com). To find a stadium, search by the name of the ballpark inside the city. For example, search for “SBC Park, San Francisco, CA” to find the ballpark where the San Francisco Giants play. Click the Satellite button in the top corner of the map and zoom in to take a closer look at the ballpark. Figure 1-17 shows the results.

Figure 1-17. SBC Park in Google Maps

Google Maps will try to find the address and will return a list of possibilities. Sometimes the first link will be correct, but sometimes you’ll have to check other items on the list. (For example, “Petco Park, San Diego, CA” doesn’t return the right result at the top.)

Better Pictures and Distances with Google Earth

Google has released a cool new service called Google Earth that extends the aerial views of Google Maps with better images and lots of additional features. You can download a free version from http://earth.google.com. My favorite trick with Google Earth is to measure distances inside ballparks. Curious how far a home run ball was hit? Check it out with Google Earth.

For example, at SBC Park ...