Mister Baseball

Words and images by Joe Gray

The HERTS FALCONS (Herts Baseball Club’s first team) will play in the top tier of the British baseball league for the first time this season, and installation of an outfield fence has just been completed at the team’s home field, Grovehill Park.

The fencing was installed not only for the main diamond at Grovehill Park, but also for a second diamond, which will be prepared over the summer to ready it for Opening Day 2010 (see right). The work is part of Herts Baseball Club’s Diamond Development project, which has been funded in part by the UK National Lottery’s Awards for All programme and in part through income raised by members and friends of the club.

The state of other NBL South teams’ grounds

The HERTS FALCONS will play in the National Baseball League (NBL) South, and of the four teams they will compete against, only one – the CROYDON PIRATES – has a diamond with a permanent outfield fence.

The other three teams all put up orange plastic fencing before each game and take it down afterwards. While such temporary fencing is preferable to not having a home-run boundary, balls do not bounce back off the material, and they regularly roll underneath for a ground-rule double (preventing a runner scoring from first).

The fencing material

The fencing is a chain-link material coated in a green PVC and supported by metal poles bedded in the ground using concrete. A double top-rail construction (see right) gives the fence enough strength to support an outfielder mounting it to attempt to catch a fly ball. At 6 foot tall, the fence rises higher than that at the CROYDON PIRATES’ ground, Roundshaw.

While the fence is not padded, a slight springiness in the chain-link material means that it is slightly more forgiving than a solid metal fence.

The fencing material is different from that used for the existing backstop on diamond one at Grovehill Park (see below right). The existing fencing also runs part of the way down the first-base and third-base foul lines.

The nook in left field

The original plans had left field at 295 feet, centre field at 350 feet, and right field at 265 feet. However, a soccer pitch behind the two diamonds has been shifted by 21 feet, which has allowed the left field fence to be pushed back to 312 feet, with the centre field now reaching 363 feet at its deepest point.

The soccer pitch does not run for the full length of the left-field fence on diamond one and the right-field fence on diamond two. This has allowed Herts Baseball Club to incorporate nooks in the left-field corner on diamond one (see below right) and the right-field corner on diamond two to make the most of the available space, while at the same time adding character to the field.

Such a feature is reminiscent of old American ballparks, with the dimensions of the field constrained by objects around the perimeter. While some new retro-style parks have such features built in, their presence may seem a little artificial to some fans. At Grovehill Park, however, there can be no accusation of artificial quirkiness, as there is a very real constraint on the perimeter in the soccer pitch.

That nook in left field awaits a name. Perhaps it can be reserved for some batter in the future who has a hit carom off its quirky angles to enable a crucial run to score.

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Joe Gray writes for BaseballGB and also looks after Great British top-tier statistics, Project Cobb, and the Great Britain National Team archive.