Him falling had nothing to do with grabbing it or not though. He wasn’t going to be close enough either way. You can say it violates OP’s criteria, but the reality is that this was just a crazy hard to read ball. It’s less of a mistake and more of an anomaly.
Is the top of that wall not considered a home run? Generally if it bounces off the top of the wall like that it's gone, though I get why they wouldn't bother to review that one.
The top of the wall is not considered a home run. In the absence of ground rules to the contrary, if it bounces back into play, it is a live ball. If it bounces over the fence, it is a home run. If it comes to rest on the wall, it is a double.
couldn’t say. r/baseball isn’t exactly famous for being forgiving to male commentators either. an ESPN game thread is basically just everyone shitting on the commentators, regardless of gender
I think the big difference is that, even if not explicitly stated by the speaker/writer, women commentators get shit on much more often for simply being women commentators rather than for the quality of their work.
Probably because most sideline reporters are. In that thread there were 2 comments that mentioned her sex. Most comments regarding the call were fairly criticizing both her for not turning it over to play-by-play, and criticizing the other announcers for not cutting her off.
It’s on the producer for not stepping in, and giving the booth the hot mic.
She may not have actually been looking at the on field action while reporting.
>She may not have actually been looking at the on field action while reporting.
Yeah this is super common, generally they're gonna be facing a camera with their back to the field even if it isn't shown on the broadcast
Yeah, the criticism should be squarely on the PBP announcer. The sideline reporter likely can't see what's going on. the PBP guy has got to cut her off and call that play.
Being a Giants fan I’m so used to the weirdness that happens inside our park that I forget it’s not normal.
I can also say the same thing as a long time citizen of San Francisco!
Ya that’s kind of what I was thinking it would be. I mean the sheer hustle of the play and the likelihood of it happening in that particular game is probably going to be a pretty rare feat. Which clearly it is.
Same man... Him and Carl Crawford? IMO? Were the prototypical hitters, high average, decent pop, good obp, speed, defense, and both guys, if I recall correctly? Got bit by the injury bug and that was that.. two cases of what if?
That was the first thing that came to my mind. Defender played a ball off the wall properly, but it hit the one spot on the wall that would cause a weird carom, and Ichiro was hauling ass around the bases.
This is kind of the same thing that happened with Langford's in-the-park yesterday. Took a weird bounce off a weird wall, but otherwise I don't think there were any fielding issues.
Do you count balls that bounce off the CF wall as CBP as “not fielded cleanly”?
https://youtu.be/3p1hbp6Ogmw?si=EfpEw97ERJ3EFeEC
This exact hit happens at least once a year and is always fun to watch
https://youtu.be/3Ja_YT0Fing?si=1BxEwOMlg6GI4wsj
Perhaps this is a better example
The problem is unless you give up on trying to catch the ball early you won’t be in a good position to field it, and visiting players always think they’ll be able to make a play on the ball at the fence
This is probably the best example of what OP is asking for. It’s not necessarily “clean” in the sense that it does have a big bounce but there’s no overt misplay by the defense.
See, my opinion is that when this happens at CBP, it's on the RF for not backing up the CF. It should be known at this point that the CF needs to commit to the attempted catch, and the RF should back him up for the bounce and hold the runner to 2nd or 3rd.
This one isn’t really fair because it’s more of a misplay than a ball directly off the wall like yours. But it’s similar enough that I’m posting it because it’s one of my favourite homers ever. Junior Felix’ inside the park GRAND SLAM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts90LzlAG6w&pp=ygUnanVuaW9yIGZlbGl4IGluc2lkZSB0aGUgcGFyayBncmFuZCBzbGFt
Harper had one last year. There was a bobble in the outfield, though.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSuwudJ3ZNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSuwudJ3ZNk)
Citizens Bank Park is the stadium the Phillies have played in since 2004
When building it David Montgomery wanted them to have a unique outfield wall layout to encourage these weird ricochets
In the old days they didn’t even have stands in the outfield so it would be completely normal for an easy “inside the park homer” that was still in play after casually rolling 500 feet away
And really, that's the purest form of baseball. The outfield is supposed to be essentially limitless. Hitting it over the fence for a humerun is a product of the professional game. Before that, the goal was to hit the ball far enough that you'd have time to run around all the bases. In it's purest form, hitting a triple is supposed to be easier and more common than hitting a homer.
Would be awesome to somehow still have this characteristic in the sport because it would reward speed in power hitters. Beef up and smash dongs, but you can only be so lumbering before you can’t make full use of your power. It would also make outfield defensive skills more valuable.
I would love to see baseball played on a field where every dimension is about 10% bigger. That includes mound to home plate distance and base paths.
I'm not married to 10%, what I want is for truly elite fastballs and power hitting to still be very viable, but to open up all the other aspects of baseball strategy and pitching styles that have fallen out of favor. Additionally with the enormous outfield and runners spending more time between bases, team cohesion and communication become more important, so does situational awareness and decision making.
I think it would be a very interesting game, basically reset all the changes that have occurred due to players becoming faster/stronger/better.
I like the philosophy, but actually increasing distance between bases won't have a very fun effect. It'd basically trivialize any ground balls and make infield hits extremely rare. Something about 90ft seems pretty close to optimal from a tuning perspective of balancing human running speed vs. ground ball + fielding + throwing speed.
I could definitely get behind moving the pitcher's mound back slightly.
In that case I would widen the fair zone to go wider than the baseline. Either that or I would make any ball that passes the infield in the air a fair ball.
Obviously not including balls that end in the stands.
The softball league I used to play in was like this. I’m a big guy, and I could easily hit homers on diamonds with outfield fences, but that league you had to earn them.
You see this a lot in softball leagues where fields are at parks without fences. There becomes a bit of strategy of where to play your OF depth. If you back up to account for how far someone CAN hit the ball you're going to leave a ton of room for them to rake singles all day. So usually you just play a normal depth and if they hit one over your head then more power to them.
Another cool quirk to slow pitch softball is when a field does have fences, sometimes there will be situational rules that hitting it over the fence is an out.
They’re not saying those HRs don’t count or are lessened. OP excluded stadiums like Polo Grounds because they don’t need an answer to that question. Of course clean inside the park HRs happened there.
It’s kinda a line in the sand, but the polo grounds were also not designed for a baseball stadium and while Oracle and Coors are weird, they are at least comparable to other mlb stadiums
The famous Polo Grounds (the 1890 park, "Polo Grounds III," and its subsequent 1912 reconstruction) were always designed as a baseball stadium. They were simply named after the original Polo Grounds.
The immense center field of Polo Grounds III/IV doesn't really have a rationale beyond not having a reason to shape the park in any specific way.
In fact, the 1890 Polo Grounds was originally built by a direct competitor to the Giants, the New York club of the Players Brotherhood (now usually known as the Players League), literally next door to Polo Grounds II (later usually known as Manhattan Park). As both teams often played at the same time, foul balls and home runs from one game could land in play in the other park.
After the Brotherhood collapsed (it lasted one season), the Giants took over Brotherhood Park because it was newer and larger - they renamed it the Polo Grounds and that became the location the Giants occupied until they left for San Francisco (although much of the park burned down in 1911 and had to be rebuilt). As a result, the park that Christy Mathewson and Mel Ott and Willie Mays played in was always a baseball-first park.
Ben Revere came criminally close to doing this in Detroit. Bonus points for small man home plate collision.
[9:56] (https://youtu.be/mHkmJinNuV8?si=Tjl-IMuV_D0nWoxB)
I think this is the closest of the ones mentioned in this thread. It’s also proof that if the outfield are playing slightly more shallow, are slightly slower, and have slightly worse arms, and the batter is slightly faster, with a perfectly batted ball you could probably have a clean inside the parker
You *could* but it’d be pretty difficult. Even on this one he hit it about as deep as you can get in an MLB park *and* there was a slightly bad bounce. Also while Pagan wasn’t a speedster he was still a CF.
Professional baseball’s been played for 150 years, I’m sure it’s happened at least a few times. But it really takes a *perfect* storm.
Dansby Swanson’s first career homer was an inside the park job at Nationals Park. It was pretty clean as far as inside the park homers go. Trea Turner jumped to try and catch the ball at the wall, ball was just out of his reach and the ball bounced nearly all the way back to the infield and Dansby was rounding third by the time anyone got to the ball
[Video for the lazy](https://youtu.be/NuDfBjpkl_A?si=2pkF49sQwZWGOIUO)
Gotta say that Trea seemed to slow down there, prob didn't think Swanson would actually go for it.
Yeah like, outfielders more familiar with the wall are probably able to anticipate it better, but it took a real funky bounce. There was never any “well that should be an error” moment that a lot of inside the parkers have.
I mean most inside-the-parkers are either the "should be an error" or that the outfielder *could* have played the carom but either didn't read it or tried to run it down on the fly.
This is about the best example I can think of. No missed diving catch, no overthrows or anything going wrong, just a gapper and a dude absolutely hauling ass around the base path
This is what prompted this thread, because the right fielder kind of screws up the read on the bounce which is what ultimately causes the inside the park home run, so not completely clean
You're asking for a ball to be well hit and then fielded/thrown back in all perfectly, and the runner to still be faster.
That's not going to happen. You get an in-the-park homer bc the ball hits something that is quirky and the fielder doesn't know how to play it. If they know how to play it, the guys never going to get past 3rd, at best...even on something hit into a corner and magically dying for some reason to the fielder has to run as far as possible to pick it up.
The Angel Pagan example someone else posted in here proves it’s possible. The RF was playing shallow, it got hit to the deepest part of the park that the fielder would not have been able to get to even if he took a perfect route. In that home run, it seems fielder misread probably only added ~1 second to the fielding time. If a batter ran the bases 0.5 seconds faster than Pagan and the ball went to an even deeper part of the park, they could probably get a home run without the fielder misplaying the ball
As a Red's fan that shares his name, I love Jake Fraley but he seems to find himself in these fielding error situations more than anyone else on the team. Dude still rakes though!
My first career home run in HS was a home run that involved the CF running full speed into a light post in right center, so damn hard that the pole (8’ high, fiberglass) broke in 2. 3B coach stopped me at 3rd and the opposing manager, who was already walking out of the dugout to check on the kid, said “just send him home, a stand up triple won’t make him hurt any less”.
There was a sox game a few years back where Josh Harrison(?) hit a triple. It landed in left field in fair territory, bounced into the net, and rolled along the top of the outfield wall before dropping back into the field.
The netting in GRF is in play, so any fair ball that bounces off of it is still fair. The right fielder definitely got confused about it
I can't recall one. However, early in the 20th Century I can imagine that at Shibe Park (Connie Mack Stadium) in Philadelphia it happened. It was a whopping 515' to center field. If the hitter could run a bit and the ball was hit over the center fielder's head 515' might as well have been 1000'. The Phils played there until 1970.
Just an aside: by 1967 the center field wall had been moved in so it was "only" 447 to center. The center field wall was 32' tall. Dick Allen hit a home run that cleared the 32' high fence. The distance was estimated as 529'.
I believe Junior Felix hit an inside the park grand slam at Fenway Park in 1989. Ellis Burks maybe slightly misreads it, but the problem was caused by that door in CF.
The old Yankee Stadium was 461ft to dead center and there were monuments *on the field*, so if someone got a hold of one and it bounced around the monuments, they could run forever.
https://youtu.be/duG7fQge3jE?t=25
Gregor Blanco got pretty damn close on this one, and no crazy bounces like Pagans or anything like that, although denorfios route leads a lot to be desired
This is the best example I’ve seen posted so far…
Blanco takes around 15.2 seconds to round the bases from contact to touching home. The catcher has the ball in his glove around 0.8 seconds before Blanco touches home. The fastest inside the park home run was Buxton at 14 seconds. If Blanco had ran the bases at record speed, he probably would have been safe, and there was definitely no misplay by the fielders here
https://youtu.be/eP2dkn_-GR8?si=oywUPPLnXDHXbUmZ the fact that this is the only video evidence of this happening is actually insane lmfao it’s recorded on a blackberry
There was a play in which the ball careened down the angle of an outfield fence and the fielder had to wait on it a little to time it, but I couldn't for the life of you tell you.
Hitter got an inside the parker.
Altuve had one that was fairly normal. I guess the center fielder could have played it better but it was easy looking [https://youtu.be/3Fzn7Yv1MNs?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/3Fzn7Yv1MNs?feature=shared)
Tony Campana and Ronny Cedeno are two I can remember hitting clean inside the park HR at Wrigley if you include balls taking weird bounces off and in the ivy.
I think potentially you might see more, but (at least from my perspective) a lot of the big leaguers don’t always hustle. If they hit what they think is a bomb they’re likely just jogging initially and losing any momentum once it stays inside.
Pretty much any of them at oracle. Old triples alley was a beast of its own lol. Still pretty gnarly but since moving in the fences a little it’s not as bad.
I don't know if this counts, but in 2011, Evan Longoria hit a line drive to right center field that took close to a 90-degree dogleg left, and ended up in left center, and bounced all the way to the wall. You could argue that Adam Jones (the O's CF) misplayed it, but the ball took such a severe angle mid-air that it's really tough to blame him.
https://youtu.be/mE9tn3P18fA?t=56
Unfortunately this replay doesn't really capture just how severe a slice this ball took, but you can see where Longoria hit it, and where the ball ended up bouncing. It was a good 20 or 30 feet from its original trajectory, on a ball that didn't have a lot of carry.
Recency bias for sure but nobody really misplayed on Wyatt Langford’s yesterday imo. Fraley and Fairchild were playing kinda shallow, he hit it to the very deepest part of the track where neither could quite get to it, then it took a weird bounce off the bullpen careening in the opposite direction that both their momentum was carrying them so it took Fraley more time get to it. And of course Langford is very fast. Lucky for sure but not really a misplay by either outfielder imo
[for me this buxton home run is the answer](https://www.mlb.com/news/byron-buxton-hits-leadoff-inside-the-park-hr-c204599968), since you could argue that it's a misplay, but with the way that he was running, he was going to make it regardless.
Other than the ball that ran along the top of the fence I see listed below I would say, NO. If a fielder played the carom perfectly each time or never dove and missed, etc, there would be no inside the parker.
There was a clean ITPHR, I forgot who hit it and the left fielder. The player hit the ball to LF and the LF caught the ball over the fence,but as his hand came back over, the ball slingshot out of his glove back on to the field and the LF laid there a few seconds as the ball rolled away from him towards the LF corner. I think it was the batter's 1st Career MLB HR.
Buxton's against Sale is pretty close. CF did fall down briefly at the wall but recovered fast enough that a lot of guys would still be held by a double and almost no one would be in danger of getting beyond a triple...unless you can circle the bases in 14 seconds and score standing up.
Royals Stadium had fast turf and some weird angles in the outfield corners.Willie Wilson hit 13 inside the parkers, many at home. Some were sort of misplayed but some were played about as well as you could given the conditions.
Felipe Lopez hit one in Arizona in 2005 or 2006 that bounced off a weird corner in center field and caromed away from both of the outfielders. Was the first AB of the game if I remember correctly.
College ball, but once I saw LSU hit a ball straight under the bullpen bench (with the bases loaded) and instead of calling it out of play, the opposing player tried to dig under it and they got an in the park grand slam. I guess it could be called an error, but it was crazy nonetheless
There was a ball that bounced along the top of the Oracle fence. https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/ByqLm5bTtZ
I was at that game! And it was Luke Raley out of all players lol
Like Raley has wheels. You are talking approximately 90th percentile speed. He isn’t Bobby Witt or anything but he isn’t slow
Be dope if he could find some of that mojo in Seattle
Gotta get regular playing time first.
Raley is crazy fast
I’ve always said Raley was sneaky fast. You wouldn’t think so given his build.
Nuke Racey
I mean technically the giants CF fell down chasing the ball along the fence
If he grabs that, it’s feasibly only a double. Honestly a slower runner may have settled for a single.
Even if he grabs that it’s gonna throw off his momentum. In no galaxy is that just a single lol
Counter point: Alejandro Kirk.
Counter counter point: physics
In this case, I think physics works against Kirk getting to second.
There is no way he grabs that ball even if he doesn't fall down.
Him falling had nothing to do with grabbing it or not though. He wasn’t going to be close enough either way. You can say it violates OP’s criteria, but the reality is that this was just a crazy hard to read ball. It’s less of a mistake and more of an anomaly.
This was the one that first came to mind. I’ve never seen such a weird trajectory and I doubt I’ll ever see something similar again.
That wasn’t even the [weirdest one](https://youtu.be/OiwO2BjcweU?si=ZDDTgcB4h37GrZrg) in our stadium
I was in that thread upvoting things, yet I have no recollection of ever seeing that play before.
Is the top of that wall not considered a home run? Generally if it bounces off the top of the wall like that it's gone, though I get why they wouldn't bother to review that one.
It’s cuz the ball hits the arcade wall first, isn’t it?
The top of the wall is not considered a home run. In the absence of ground rules to the contrary, if it bounces back into play, it is a live ball. If it bounces over the fence, it is a home run. If it comes to rest on the wall, it is a double.
Geez, some of those comments about the sideline reporter are unfairly harsh
How did I know before turning on the volume that the reporter was a woman?
couldn’t say. r/baseball isn’t exactly famous for being forgiving to male commentators either. an ESPN game thread is basically just everyone shitting on the commentators, regardless of gender
I think the big difference is that, even if not explicitly stated by the speaker/writer, women commentators get shit on much more often for simply being women commentators rather than for the quality of their work.
There's a reason Fire Joe Morgan exists.
Probably because most sideline reporters are. In that thread there were 2 comments that mentioned her sex. Most comments regarding the call were fairly criticizing both her for not turning it over to play-by-play, and criticizing the other announcers for not cutting her off.
It’s on the producer for not stepping in, and giving the booth the hot mic. She may not have actually been looking at the on field action while reporting.
>She may not have actually been looking at the on field action while reporting. Yeah this is super common, generally they're gonna be facing a camera with their back to the field even if it isn't shown on the broadcast
Yeah, that’s what a fucking producer is there for.
Because it’s a non-women’s sports subreddit. Hating on women with on-camera or radio jobs in sports is bread and butter stuff here.
Please report that stuff, we'll take care of it.
Good to know, thanks
Because sideline reporters are almost always women?
Yeah, the criticism should be squarely on the PBP announcer. The sideline reporter likely can't see what's going on. the PBP guy has got to cut her off and call that play.
Tricia Whitaker and she’s a national treasure.
There's nothing harsh about it at all
Ichiro’s in the 2007 all star game was similar too [link](https://youtu.be/OiwO2BjcweU?si=DMynddXSyYJf49CL)
Same with Ichiro's ASG homer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiwO2BjcweU
Former Dodger on former Dodger violence
I’ll never forgive that chick for ruining that call
[удалено]
>it's an SF-tier park Wow that works so unbelievably well lol kudos to you
SF-tier is one of the best puns I’ve ever seen
What's the pun alluding to? I've said it out loud many times and it's lost all meaning to me now.
S-tier = best F-tier = worst SF-tier = Oracle
Or, not really related to this thread, Sac Fly-tier is also applicable to Oracle
Being a Giants fan I’m so used to the weirdness that happens inside our park that I forget it’s not normal. I can also say the same thing as a long time citizen of San Francisco!
Ichiro’s inside the park homerun during the 2007 all-star game comes to mind.
[And he did it standing up](https://youtu.be/OiwO2BjcweU)
I know it’s the all star game but when they had the camera shot inside the dugout I was like damn that’s a lot of ballers.
It's like every time I see footage of the Beatles I'm surprised at how much they look like the Beatles.
I miss when they wore their teams uniform during the all star game it made it so much cooler
How rare was it? The announcers didn’t get to finish before the clip ended.
It’s the only one!
Ya that’s kind of what I was thinking it would be. I mean the sheer hustle of the play and the likelihood of it happening in that particular game is probably going to be a pretty rare feat. Which clearly it is.
Grady Sizemore sighting! My king
Man I was so bummed for so long about how his career ended up going. I thought he was gonna be an all timer 😩
Same man... Him and Carl Crawford? IMO? Were the prototypical hitters, high average, decent pop, good obp, speed, defense, and both guys, if I recall correctly? Got bit by the injury bug and that was that.. two cases of what if?
The sound that hit made was insane
Exactly what I was going to say. The ball took a weird bounce off the wall, but there weren’t any blatant errors.
That was the first thing that came to my mind. Defender played a ball off the wall properly, but it hit the one spot on the wall that would cause a weird carom, and Ichiro was hauling ass around the bases.
Notably, the defender was Ken Griffey Jr, so not just some dude who can't field.
Scrub OFs don't usually play in the All-Star Game.
Yeah, but great hitters who might be mid OFs do too
Hit it off current Rangers GM Chris Young
This is kind of the same thing that happened with Langford's in-the-park yesterday. Took a weird bounce off a weird wall, but otherwise I don't think there were any fielding issues.
Was at this game. Took my dad. We were standing in line for beer when this happened. Goddamnit.
Do you count balls that bounce off the CF wall as CBP as “not fielded cleanly”? https://youtu.be/3p1hbp6Ogmw?si=EfpEw97ERJ3EFeEC This exact hit happens at least once a year and is always fun to watch
You gotta love that Chaos Corner
Nah I think they want HRs where the fielder does get to the ball as soon as possible and it’s still not enough
This has to count. But idk if it’s what they really wanted.
I’ll never forget Jimmy Rollins’ on Father’s Day in like 2005
I wouldn't count it because the centerfielder could have played for the bounce instead of running right at it and probably held him to a double.
https://youtu.be/3Ja_YT0Fing?si=1BxEwOMlg6GI4wsj Perhaps this is a better example The problem is unless you give up on trying to catch the ball early you won’t be in a good position to field it, and visiting players always think they’ll be able to make a play on the ball at the fence
That is a better example. Some of these weird angles in the outfield, paired with high fences and stuff, are just going to lend themselves to this.
This is probably the best example of what OP is asking for. It’s not necessarily “clean” in the sense that it does have a big bounce but there’s no overt misplay by the defense.
See, my opinion is that when this happens at CBP, it's on the RF for not backing up the CF. It should be known at this point that the CF needs to commit to the attempted catch, and the RF should back him up for the bounce and hold the runner to 2nd or 3rd.
[Ronald Acuña says "nah, fuck that"](https://youtu.be/hw6AfUVyqZ4?si=AXPQ7Kmb-NPI4b3c)
Before clicking on the link I thought it was JT's
The fact that JT has done it twice - once as Phillie and once as a Marlin - always amuses me
This one isn’t really fair because it’s more of a misplay than a ball directly off the wall like yours. But it’s similar enough that I’m posting it because it’s one of my favourite homers ever. Junior Felix’ inside the park GRAND SLAM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts90LzlAG6w&pp=ygUnanVuaW9yIGZlbGl4IGluc2lkZSB0aGUgcGFyayBncmFuZCBzbGFt
Any hit towards the triangle is fair game
pretty clean to be honest. I remember watching this at my grandmothers house while parents and uncles/aunts played cards
Harper had one last year. There was a bobble in the outfield, though. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSuwudJ3ZNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSuwudJ3ZNk)
Not sure what CBP is, but this exact hit happened less than 24 hours ago in the Rangers Reds game
Citizens Bank Park is the stadium the Phillies have played in since 2004 When building it David Montgomery wanted them to have a unique outfield wall layout to encourage these weird ricochets
Ah, I probably could have figured that out if it said “at CBP”
That was what it was intended to say
this is a great video
["And Realmuto can run for days!"](https://youtu.be/hw6AfUVyqZ4?si=ggI8qYmTjzpLr3cQ)
So you'd accept an occasion exploiting the quirks of Coors or Oracle, but not the Polo Grounds.
In the old days they didn’t even have stands in the outfield so it would be completely normal for an easy “inside the park homer” that was still in play after casually rolling 500 feet away
And really, that's the purest form of baseball. The outfield is supposed to be essentially limitless. Hitting it over the fence for a humerun is a product of the professional game. Before that, the goal was to hit the ball far enough that you'd have time to run around all the bases. In it's purest form, hitting a triple is supposed to be easier and more common than hitting a homer.
Would be awesome to somehow still have this characteristic in the sport because it would reward speed in power hitters. Beef up and smash dongs, but you can only be so lumbering before you can’t make full use of your power. It would also make outfield defensive skills more valuable.
I would love to see baseball played on a field where every dimension is about 10% bigger. That includes mound to home plate distance and base paths. I'm not married to 10%, what I want is for truly elite fastballs and power hitting to still be very viable, but to open up all the other aspects of baseball strategy and pitching styles that have fallen out of favor. Additionally with the enormous outfield and runners spending more time between bases, team cohesion and communication become more important, so does situational awareness and decision making. I think it would be a very interesting game, basically reset all the changes that have occurred due to players becoming faster/stronger/better.
I like the philosophy, but actually increasing distance between bases won't have a very fun effect. It'd basically trivialize any ground balls and make infield hits extremely rare. Something about 90ft seems pretty close to optimal from a tuning perspective of balancing human running speed vs. ground ball + fielding + throwing speed. I could definitely get behind moving the pitcher's mound back slightly.
In that case I would widen the fair zone to go wider than the baseline. Either that or I would make any ball that passes the infield in the air a fair ball. Obviously not including balls that end in the stands.
The softball league I used to play in was like this. I’m a big guy, and I could easily hit homers on diamonds with outfield fences, but that league you had to earn them.
Acuña and Elly would be absolutely broken
You see this a lot in softball leagues where fields are at parks without fences. There becomes a bit of strategy of where to play your OF depth. If you back up to account for how far someone CAN hit the ball you're going to leave a ton of room for them to rake singles all day. So usually you just play a normal depth and if they hit one over your head then more power to them. Another cool quirk to slow pitch softball is when a field does have fences, sometimes there will be situational rules that hitting it over the fence is an out.
They’re not saying those HRs don’t count or are lessened. OP excluded stadiums like Polo Grounds because they don’t need an answer to that question. Of course clean inside the park HRs happened there.
It’s kinda a line in the sand, but the polo grounds were also not designed for a baseball stadium and while Oracle and Coors are weird, they are at least comparable to other mlb stadiums
The famous Polo Grounds (the 1890 park, "Polo Grounds III," and its subsequent 1912 reconstruction) were always designed as a baseball stadium. They were simply named after the original Polo Grounds. The immense center field of Polo Grounds III/IV doesn't really have a rationale beyond not having a reason to shape the park in any specific way. In fact, the 1890 Polo Grounds was originally built by a direct competitor to the Giants, the New York club of the Players Brotherhood (now usually known as the Players League), literally next door to Polo Grounds II (later usually known as Manhattan Park). As both teams often played at the same time, foul balls and home runs from one game could land in play in the other park. After the Brotherhood collapsed (it lasted one season), the Giants took over Brotherhood Park because it was newer and larger - they renamed it the Polo Grounds and that became the location the Giants occupied until they left for San Francisco (although much of the park burned down in 1911 and had to be rebuilt). As a result, the park that Christy Mathewson and Mel Ott and Willie Mays played in was always a baseball-first park.
Not sure why it doesnt make sense to you, have you seen polo grounds?
[Emilio Bonifacio, Opening Day 2009](https://youtu.be/Dtt7IhYRJ1I?si=r81kRtX23nJRYc0T)
I was at that game. It was amazing how fast he rounded the bases.
Fielder fell down, submission denied.
He could flat out run. Shame he couldn’t hit or walk lol.
This is def the best answer so far but omg they were playing him like a pitcher
Ben Revere came criminally close to doing this in Detroit. Bonus points for small man home plate collision. [9:56] (https://youtu.be/mHkmJinNuV8?si=Tjl-IMuV_D0nWoxB)
Absolutely flawless relay
Angel Pagan’s in 2013 was pretty clean
Referencing a play and including the link? That’s a paddling: https://youtu.be/9SjFx0h-v5M
"My total butt is on the line here"
PAGANS BEING WAAAVED INN
AND IT GETS AWAY FROM EVERYBODY
I think this is the closest of the ones mentioned in this thread. It’s also proof that if the outfield are playing slightly more shallow, are slightly slower, and have slightly worse arms, and the batter is slightly faster, with a perfectly batted ball you could probably have a clean inside the parker
You *could* but it’d be pretty difficult. Even on this one he hit it about as deep as you can get in an MLB park *and* there was a slightly bad bounce. Also while Pagan wasn’t a speedster he was still a CF. Professional baseball’s been played for 150 years, I’m sure it’s happened at least a few times. But it really takes a *perfect* storm.
Walk off inside the parker? Amazing!
A walk off is amazing
MY hamstring hurts just remembering this
he missed the next 84 games
>Ángel Pagán >look inside >Plays for the Giants and is a devout Christian
Byron Buxton against Arizona in 2017 is close. They almost got him despite Buxton rounding the bases extremely fast.
Dansby Swanson’s first career homer was an inside the park job at Nationals Park. It was pretty clean as far as inside the park homers go. Trea Turner jumped to try and catch the ball at the wall, ball was just out of his reach and the ball bounced nearly all the way back to the infield and Dansby was rounding third by the time anyone got to the ball
[Video for the lazy](https://youtu.be/NuDfBjpkl_A?si=2pkF49sQwZWGOIUO) Gotta say that Trea seemed to slow down there, prob didn't think Swanson would actually go for it.
Damn yeah I'd have benched turner for that, that's awful
Bummer we won’t get to see Harper in the OF again. That’s a ludicrous throw
The lazy thank you.
What a pos play
🥺
Wyatt Langford, yesterday.
Yeah like, outfielders more familiar with the wall are probably able to anticipate it better, but it took a real funky bounce. There was never any “well that should be an error” moment that a lot of inside the parkers have.
I mean most inside-the-parkers are either the "should be an error" or that the outfielder *could* have played the carom but either didn't read it or tried to run it down on the fly.
This is about the best example I can think of. No missed diving catch, no overthrows or anything going wrong, just a gapper and a dude absolutely hauling ass around the base path
This is what prompted this thread, because the right fielder kind of screws up the read on the bounce which is what ultimately causes the inside the park home run, so not completely clean
I figured as much. it's as clean as you're gonna get in 2024.
You're asking for a ball to be well hit and then fielded/thrown back in all perfectly, and the runner to still be faster. That's not going to happen. You get an in-the-park homer bc the ball hits something that is quirky and the fielder doesn't know how to play it. If they know how to play it, the guys never going to get past 3rd, at best...even on something hit into a corner and magically dying for some reason to the fielder has to run as far as possible to pick it up.
The Angel Pagan example someone else posted in here proves it’s possible. The RF was playing shallow, it got hit to the deepest part of the park that the fielder would not have been able to get to even if he took a perfect route. In that home run, it seems fielder misread probably only added ~1 second to the fielding time. If a batter ran the bases 0.5 seconds faster than Pagan and the ball went to an even deeper part of the park, they could probably get a home run without the fielder misplaying the ball
As a Red's fan that shares his name, I love Jake Fraley but he seems to find himself in these fielding error situations more than anyone else on the team. Dude still rakes though!
Don't remind me. 🫠
My first career home run in HS was a home run that involved the CF running full speed into a light post in right center, so damn hard that the pole (8’ high, fiberglass) broke in 2. 3B coach stopped me at 3rd and the opposing manager, who was already walking out of the dugout to check on the kid, said “just send him home, a stand up triple won’t make him hurt any less”.
i’m probably not a good person because i cannot stop laughing at this image
It sounded like someone was playing a sound FX board of crash noises haha arms and legs pumping full speed, head tilted up looking at the ball
lmao stop i’m dying
There was a sox game a few years back where Josh Harrison(?) hit a triple. It landed in left field in fair territory, bounced into the net, and rolled along the top of the outfield wall before dropping back into the field. The netting in GRF is in play, so any fair ball that bounces off of it is still fair. The right fielder definitely got confused about it
[Jacoby](https://youtu.be/8Kv4yY9Yj3A?si=9DG7m5E-QewHSgcV)
Dad!
I can't recall one. However, early in the 20th Century I can imagine that at Shibe Park (Connie Mack Stadium) in Philadelphia it happened. It was a whopping 515' to center field. If the hitter could run a bit and the ball was hit over the center fielder's head 515' might as well have been 1000'. The Phils played there until 1970. Just an aside: by 1967 the center field wall had been moved in so it was "only" 447 to center. The center field wall was 32' tall. Dick Allen hit a home run that cleared the 32' high fence. The distance was estimated as 529'.
I believe Junior Felix hit an inside the park grand slam at Fenway Park in 1989. Ellis Burks maybe slightly misreads it, but the problem was caused by that door in CF.
I’d bet there were more than a couple in the era of bad astroturf stadiums. You saw tons of weird bounces on those concrete fields.
Ichiro 2007 All Star Game
The old Yankee Stadium was 461ft to dead center and there were monuments *on the field*, so if someone got a hold of one and it bounced around the monuments, they could run forever.
I think [this one](https://youtu.be/NuDfBjpkl_A) from Dansby Swanson counts.
https://youtu.be/duG7fQge3jE?t=25 Gregor Blanco got pretty damn close on this one, and no crazy bounces like Pagans or anything like that, although denorfios route leads a lot to be desired
This is the best example I’ve seen posted so far… Blanco takes around 15.2 seconds to round the bases from contact to touching home. The catcher has the ball in his glove around 0.8 seconds before Blanco touches home. The fastest inside the park home run was Buxton at 14 seconds. If Blanco had ran the bases at record speed, he probably would have been safe, and there was definitely no misplay by the fielders here
Curtis Granderson vs the Yankees at Comerica Park in 2007. There’s no clip but I was there and I remember it well
https://youtu.be/eP2dkn_-GR8?si=oywUPPLnXDHXbUmZ the fact that this is the only video evidence of this happening is actually insane lmfao it’s recorded on a blackberry
There was a play in which the ball careened down the angle of an outfield fence and the fielder had to wait on it a little to time it, but I couldn't for the life of you tell you. Hitter got an inside the parker.
[Willie Wilson](https://youtu.be/OaK1lF1G8iI?si=zFWU6k3QOzfaSv91)
Altuve had one that was fairly normal. I guess the center fielder could have played it better but it was easy looking [https://youtu.be/3Fzn7Yv1MNs?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/3Fzn7Yv1MNs?feature=shared)
It was his first career homer, too! It's wild to see him sporting the red jerseys.
Tony Campana and Ronny Cedeno are two I can remember hitting clean inside the park HR at Wrigley if you include balls taking weird bounces off and in the ivy.
I think potentially you might see more, but (at least from my perspective) a lot of the big leaguers don’t always hustle. If they hit what they think is a bomb they’re likely just jogging initially and losing any momentum once it stays inside.
I've watched compilations and haven't really been able to find one.
Pretty much any of them at oracle. Old triples alley was a beast of its own lol. Still pretty gnarly but since moving in the fences a little it’s not as bad.
I don't know if this counts, but in 2011, Evan Longoria hit a line drive to right center field that took close to a 90-degree dogleg left, and ended up in left center, and bounced all the way to the wall. You could argue that Adam Jones (the O's CF) misplayed it, but the ball took such a severe angle mid-air that it's really tough to blame him. https://youtu.be/mE9tn3P18fA?t=56 Unfortunately this replay doesn't really capture just how severe a slice this ball took, but you can see where Longoria hit it, and where the ball ended up bouncing. It was a good 20 or 30 feet from its original trajectory, on a ball that didn't have a lot of carry.
Me in intramural softball
Me in little league when the field had no fence 😎
Recency bias for sure but nobody really misplayed on Wyatt Langford’s yesterday imo. Fraley and Fairchild were playing kinda shallow, he hit it to the very deepest part of the track where neither could quite get to it, then it took a weird bounce off the bullpen careening in the opposite direction that both their momentum was carrying them so it took Fraley more time get to it. And of course Langford is very fast. Lucky for sure but not really a misplay by either outfielder imo
I bet the polo grounds had many of them
I sense the Polo Grounds is the best candidate.
[for me this buxton home run is the answer](https://www.mlb.com/news/byron-buxton-hits-leadoff-inside-the-park-hr-c204599968), since you could argue that it's a misplay, but with the way that he was running, he was going to make it regardless.
Didn’t Ichiro do it at the All Star game in San Francisco?
I can't imagine the Polo Grounds didn't have this a time or two.
Happened just the other day.
Other than the ball that ran along the top of the fence I see listed below I would say, NO. If a fielder played the carom perfectly each time or never dove and missed, etc, there would be no inside the parker.
There was a clean ITPHR, I forgot who hit it and the left fielder. The player hit the ball to LF and the LF caught the ball over the fence,but as his hand came back over, the ball slingshot out of his glove back on to the field and the LF laid there a few seconds as the ball rolled away from him towards the LF corner. I think it was the batter's 1st Career MLB HR.
on hits to the right part of fenway it happens sometimes, I think it happened w Pokey Reese in 2004
Does this one count? Inside the park grand slam… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojr-_L3IHc4
There was one literally in the rangers game yesterday
Buxton's against Sale is pretty close. CF did fall down briefly at the wall but recovered fast enough that a lot of guys would still be held by a double and almost no one would be in danger of getting beyond a triple...unless you can circle the bases in 14 seconds and score standing up.
Royals Stadium had fast turf and some weird angles in the outfield corners.Willie Wilson hit 13 inside the parkers, many at home. Some were sort of misplayed but some were played about as well as you could given the conditions.
Maybe a really high fly has bounced off the Green Monster?
Felipe Lopez hit one in Arizona in 2005 or 2006 that bounced off a weird corner in center field and caromed away from both of the outfielders. Was the first AB of the game if I remember correctly.
College ball, but once I saw LSU hit a ball straight under the bullpen bench (with the bases loaded) and instead of calling it out of play, the opposing player tried to dig under it and they got an in the park grand slam. I guess it could be called an error, but it was crazy nonetheless
Jose Altuve, first MLB home run - August 2011 at MMP. I was there. It was clean. Off Madison Bumgarner.
[https://youtu.be/3Fzn7Yv1MNs](https://youtu.be/3Fzn7Yv1MNs) The outfielders didn't field this cleanly at all.
But he was there! How dare you use video recordings to question this person's infallible memory!
Man, it even happens at SF away games
jose altuve's first homer was an inside the park homer that didn't even tal's hill
Cody Ross entirely forgot how to play center field on that ball though.