How Many Square Feet Does a Standard Baseball Field Measure?
Due to variations in the outfield, baseball fields do not have a standard size. Only the infield diamond of a baseball field must conform to a set standard. In high school, college and professional baseball, the distance between bases must be 90 feet, resulting in a baseball diamond containing 8,100 square feet. In youth baseball, the local board of directors chooses the distance between the bases.
In baseball’s early years, the physical limitations of a stadium’s site determined the shape and size of the outfield. Boston’s Fenway Park, for example, has a comparatively short distance of 310 feet from home base to left field fence due to the proximity of Landsdowne Street. In comparison, the distance is 355 feet at Chicago’s Wrigley Field and 345 feet at Detroit’s Comerica Park. League officials permit these variations rather than imposing the financial burden of altering an existing field or constructing a new stadium to meet a set standard. Today’s stadium designers take advantage of this leeway by purposely building stadiums with unique outfield dimensions. In theory, this is supposed to give their team a home-field advantage, as the outfielders who spend half their time playing at that particular stadium are more comfortable with its dimensions than visitors are.
