When the powers that be were planning and building Citizens Bank Park, their intention was to make it play neutral. In other words, have it favor pitchers and batters equally. But another priority was also to face the stadium so that patrons would have a view of downtown Philadelphia. As you may recall, there was plenty of talk at the time to have the ballpark situated somewhere near or in downtown. Since that option didn't work out, the next logical step was to face the ballpark in South Philly so it would at least have a view of downtown.
But by trying to incorporate a downtown view through centerfield, the Phillies almost insured a wind pattern that would hurt pitchers and favor batters. As you can see in the graphic [via Google Earth], Citizens Bank Park faces north-northeast. On the other hand, the prevailing wind pattern in Philadelphia is out of the southwest. This means that most of the time, batters have a tailwind to aid their balls in play.
Perhaps the Phillies should have faced the stadium to the northwest. The prevailing wind would then have been more of a crosswind in that case, and really, the view of downtown Philadelphia would probably be more centered in the opening just slightly to the right of straightaway centerfield.
The downside to such an orientation is that as the sun went down, it would at least be partially in the eyes of the batters, though the outfield walls would likely block much of it.
But misaligning the stadium may have been only the first mistake the Phillies made. The second mistake was building such short dimensions, and then to make matters worse, mis-labeling them once play began for the inaugural season in 2004.
Pitchers, batters, and coaches, all suspicious of the true distances to the outfield walls from homeplate supposedly used laser range finders often used in golf. They determined that the power alley in left field was much shorter than the 369 feet that the sign claimed the distance to be.
In fact, using Google Earth [click graphic to enlarge], we can measure that the distance to the power alley is actually just 355 feet or so, much less than the 369 that was initially claimed. Eventually, the signage was corrected, but by then the damage had been done.
Fortunately, the Phillies decided to rectify the situation even further, and during this past offseason, the leftfield wall was moved back ten feet and made a bit higher. The Phillies stated that the reconstruction should yield 10 to 12 percent fewer homeruns and hopefully play more neutral.
If that doesn't work, they may have to put it on jacks and rotate it 120 degrees or so to the left.
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Banana Ball
In case you were wondering, Ryan Howard would have to hit a ball approximately 510 feet down the left field line to hit it out of the entire ball park. But that is just the easy part as he would have to slice it a bit around the foul/fair pole in order to miss the scoreboard.
An easier shot would be to the bullpen, that is "only" 430 feet away in right-center field.
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Hacking Diamond-Mind Baseball
One of the most realistic baseball simulation games is Diamond Mind Baseball. As a matter of fact, the creators of the game can usually come fairly close to predicting a season's standings using the game.
But one area it falls short is on graphics as most stadiums are usually represented by something that looks like it was created in Paint.
Using Google Earth, you can save the image of a ball park and use it in Diamond Mind instead of the graphics they provide [click graphic to enlarge].
