Cecil wrote his Classic Column about reasons that home plate on a baseball field is southwest (or northwest) in 1990. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_379.html
Since then, several new major league ballparks have been built, so Cecil’s list of parks with home plate in the northwest is partly out of date. St. Louis’s Busch Stadium is on his list, but the old, round, ashtray-shaped Busch Stadium was torn down. The new Busch Stadium has home plate in the southwest.
I might not have known this, but I have the seating chart on my desk today. I’ll be going there in a few days.
He mentioned a few others cities with northwest plates. Have any of them changed their orientation?
This site, put together by a fan with way too much time to kill, has links to satellite images of all MLB ballparks (even where they play in a dome).
A cursory examination shows that–of the outdoor stadiums–the Rangers, Tigers, and White Sox all place HP in the NW corner. All others go in the SW except the Yankees (almost due west) and Cleveland (almost due south). The NL shows much more variation: The Cardinals, Reds and Braves place HP in the SW, the Phillies, Diamondbacks and Rockies are due S (Phillies may be more SSW), and the Marlins, Nationals, and Giants are due W. The Astros are unique in placing their home place SSE, while the Pirates bizarrely place it in the NE.
That’s quite a chart, CJJ*. There’s Google satellite images of nearly all the MLB parks. The image in St. Louis is the Old Busch. Here’s a seating chart from the Cardinals website, showing home plate in the southwest in the New Busch.
If you’d care to see it, the home page also will lead you to a virtual Busch Stadium, where you can click on any location and see a rotatable view from fhose seats.
While the D’back’s home plate is indeed due south, it’s kind of moot since they’re in a big building. The roof is never, ever open for afternoon games because even early in the season, the fans in the right field bleachers cook in the sun, not to mention safety concerns as they’d be looking directly into the sun for fly and foul balls.
There are some smallish windows on the west end and around three or four o’clock they allow a curved band of light to creep across the outfield but I’ve never noticed it between the pitcher and batter. I’ll have to pay attention next time I’m there.
