Baseballminutia

All teams are defined by the park they play in, all teams  are a slave to the features it has or once had. The Reds were a team that went through many changes because of their park, they were a team that at times were clearly defined by their park, they were a team that changed with the game because of their park.

Our job here is to understand how those changes shape our perceptions about the game and .

And so we start with the park layout and what they call Park Factor, a baseball statistic that indicates the difference between runs scored in a team’s home and road games. Most commonly used as a metric in the sabermetric community, it has found more general usage in recent years. It is helpful in assessing how much a specific ballpark contributes to the offensive production of a team or player.

To understand it in a better light we’ll look at Crosley Field and all the different faces it had over the years.

Below is an image that shows the 5 flavors of Redland/Crosley field between 1912-1968, hopefully it will bring some facets of the game up to the surface.

In 1967 the combined payroll of the entire Major Leagues was 9.5 million dollars.

500 K more than Brian Giles made last year, 1.5 million more than Austin Kearns, twenty years ago in 1988 the highest paid player was Gary Carter and he made $ 2,360,714, last year A-Rod made 33 MILLION dollars and the Yankees median salary was 5.2 million dollars.

Boggles the mind if you think too much about it, something will have to burst that bubble someday, it’s the nature of the market. Unfettered growth is an illusion in the baseball world.

One gripe you hear year in and year out is that baseball is getting too commercial, the Reds recent ownership has increased the teams marketing efforts more so then the last ownership group, this includes reintroducing vintage brands that extend merchandising (Hi Mr. Redlegs) or packaging soda pop sales with cheerleading dance troupes that were formerly a NBA side show in most cities. One of the key movements in the MLB’s marketing push has been to increase signage at the ballpark, more often this is the sort of advertising that gets the baseball traditionalist up in arms, and that caused an issue 2 years ago when the Cubs of all the teams were going to bow to the will of the advertiser and place ads on the walls of Wrigley Field.

The HORROR!!!!!!

What a load, did we forget the name of the park itself?

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