STADIUM CONCEPT!... sorta....

[Gamingboy]

I remember reading last year that Major League Baseball was planning to play a regular season game in London's "Oval" Cricket Ground during the 2007 or 2008 season. Haven't heard anything since, but it's stuck in my mind.

So then, I get this crazy idea: Use the GIMP (AKA poor man's photoshop) and Google Earth, and turn a satelite image of the Oval into a Baseball stadium. It's pretty simplistic, needless to say, and VERY rough. And you can clearly, clearly tell that I did it by copying and pasting images of a baseball diamond from somewhere else on it. But I thought it was a interesting concept, and seeing as how I spent about a hour doing this, I decided I had to share it with the world.

What do you think?

I also don't think I got the scaling right, but what can you do?

[KevinMcD]

Where you placed the infield it would be a very close left field wall and a very far right field wall and a verrrrrrrrrrrry deep centerfield like the Polo Grounds in NYC

[RyanB06]

I think if you tried orienting the area where home plate is in one of the corners, you might have something.

Try aligning home plate with the angled stands adjacent to the A202. That might just work.

(And in case anyone's wondering, I've got Google Earth running as I type this - I've never really been to London!)

[FiddySicks]

You could bunt a home run to left if its left like that. And lord would i love to see a shot over the Center Fielders head. They could take a cricket like tea break, a nap, and a shower before the Center Fielder got to the ball

[Gamingboy]

Yeah, maybe I should have turned the diamond around a bit...... In that configuration I got there it's basically the Polo Grounds with a deep right field.

[VitaminD]

If you rotated around about 45 degrees counterclockwise, you might be able to shoehorn a field in there. You wouldn't have a lot of room behind the plate (not that you have much there), so it would be like Little League was growing up - wild pitches that elude the catcher wouldn't mean the runner was guaranteed another base, since the backstop would be right behind the catcher.

[CFSize24]

Here's how I'd lay it out probably with a temp wall where I've drawn in yellow.

Not real sure of any measurements to see how this scales out, but it looks farily symmetrical.

[gueman]

Anyway to get some sort of demensions? How big is a cricket oval? I think you would need a fence in from the outfield stands and home plate should be in one of the corners. I can't imagine MLB in London, Italy perhaps even the Netherlands or Germany but can't belive there is that much intrest in baseball in the UK outside of expat Yanks....sorry CF and I must have been typing at the same time.

[Alphabet Man]

Anyway to get some sort of demensions? How big is a cricket oval? I think you would need a fence in from the outfield stands and home plate should be in one of the corners. I can't imagine MLB in London, Italy perhaps even the Netherlands or Germany but can't belive there is that much intrest in baseball in the UK outside of expat Yanks....sorry CF and I must have been typing at the same time.

cricket ovals like football ovals vary in size but seeing they both use the same oval, roughly in Australia are about 130 across and 170 long, but the Enlgish grounds are a bit smaller so maybe 120 across the pitch and 135 down the pitch

i like the idea of playing at the Brit Oval but i think it may be better to play MLB at Lords'

[gueman]

Anyway to get some sort of demensions? How big is a cricket oval? I think you would need a fence in from the outfield stands and home plate should be in one of the corners. I can't imagine MLB in London, Italy perhaps even the Netherlands or Germany but can't belive there is that much intrest in baseball in the UK outside of expat Yanks....sorry CF and I must have been typing at the same time.

cricket ovals like football ovals vary in size but seeing they both use the same oval, roughly in Australia are about 130 across and 170 long, but the Enlgish grounds are a bit smaller so maybe 120 across the pitch and 135 down the pitch

i like the idea of playing at the Brit Oval but i think it may be better to play MLB at Lords'

That would be about 426 feet or so end to end. On the diagonal it would be about 500 or so feet to dead center. Not quite the Polo Grounds but that would still be a wollop. I thought they were a lot bigger than that though. They look a lot bigger in pix, but that might be an optical illusion since the stands tend to be smaller in the UK. Lords is what about 28,000 and Brit Oval is about 18,000? I know thay are a lot bigger in Australia.

[Gamingboy]

Google Earth has a "measurement tool", so let's see here:

the way I placed the diamond:

Left Field: Approx. 308 ft.

Center: Approx. 460 ft.

Right Field: Approx. 400 ft

So, that could actually work if they put up some temporary fencing.

Now, the way that CFsize put it:

LF: Approx. 365 ft. (approx.)

Center: 509 ft! (but again, he has temporary walls in his design that, obviously, don't show up in Google Earth)

RF: 457 ft (approx.)

So, needless to say, MLB would probably have to put up some temporary fencing for both of them!

[Alphabet Man]

Anyway to get some sort of demensions? How big is a cricket oval? I think you would need a fence in from the outfield stands and home plate should be in one of the corners. I can't imagine MLB in London, Italy perhaps even the Netherlands or Germany but can't belive there is that much intrest in baseball in the UK outside of expat Yanks....sorry CF and I must have been typing at the same time.

cricket ovals like football ovals vary in size but seeing they both use the same oval, roughly in Australia are about 130 across and 170 long, but the Enlgish grounds are a bit smaller so maybe 120 across the pitch and 135 down the pitch

i like the idea of playing at the Brit Oval but i think it may be better to play MLB at Lords'

That would be about 426 feet or so end to end. On the diagonal it would be about 500 or so feet to dead center. Not quite the Polo Grounds but that would still be a wollop. I thought they were a lot bigger than that though. They look a lot bigger in pix, but that might be an optical illusion since the stands tend to be smaller in the UK. Lords is what about 28,000 and Brit Oval is about 18,000? I know thay are a lot bigger in Australia.

i think that may be a n old picture of the Oval, because two years ago, the AFL cancelled its match there bcause of redevelopement and during last years Ashes Series i noticed a new grandstand so might hold a few more, yeh in Australia we got heaps bigger stadiums (Gabba- 40K, MCG- 100K, SCG- 45K)

yeh fencing may berequired to play MLB at the Oval, but i think it maybe to big an area to play on it imo

[Gamingboy]

BTW, for those of you who are curious, here are my source images:

A "Clean" Oval:

and the Diamond I used, which I found in a suburb of London of all places!

[PackerBadger]

I would love to take the '85 Cardinals into that stadium.

There's one pretty big thing missing, though -- instead of having cutouts around the bases, you really need to have the entire infield. Since I assume all the London fields are grass, you really need to have the infield cut out, instead of the artificial turf-style just cutting out around the bases.

[Gamingboy]

I would love to take the '85 Cardinals into that stadium.

There's one pretty big thing missing, though -- instead of having cutouts around the bases, you really need to have the entire infield. Since I assume all the London fields are grass, you really need to have the infield cut out, instead of the artificial turf-style just cutting out around the bases.

I actually did it that way because I figured that once MLB was done with it for those games, they'd probably want to make it as easy as possible for the Cricket Operators of the place to get the Cricket arrangement back up as easily as possible. A whole infield would be harder to get rid of.

[jrh31584]

One thing I notice is that there is almost no room behind home plate. There is at least 45 feet between home plate and the backstop in every major league park, and usually around 60 feet.