How did Major League Baseball allow such a field to be constructed? Literally, this is completely beyond me. This field...nicely put, is the most idiotic and stupid thing to happen to sports since Don Denkinger's blown call in the 1985 "Show-Me Series." The only thing I can think happened is that the Astro's organization got together and decided to hire a bunch of interior design majors - who failed out of their high school design class for being stupid - told them to come up with the stupidest thing their combined sub-zero iq's could think of, and then got permission, somehow, from Major League Baseball to build it.
It's not even creative, it's stupid. It's not revolutionary, it's mentally challenged. It's not a baseball field, it resembles a wiffleball field that a bunch of drunk, right-hand hitting college kids designed one night so they could hit a bunch of homeruns to the short porch in left.
And for kicks and grins, they decided to slap a pole in centerfield because they thought it would be funny for the outfielders to shotgun a beer, spin around three times, then try to track down a wiffleball that was perfectly fungo'd to centerfield, hoping he'd run into the pole and they could all get a good laugh. There's a pole in centerfield. If you would've told me 10 years ago that the Houston Astro's were going to construct a field that had a pole in centerfield, I would've looked you right in the eye and said, "there is absolutely nothing I could possibly think of that would is more retarded than that."
But I was wrong, the "creative" idiots that designed the field went one up on me...they put the pole on a hill...in center field.
Can you imagine how it went?
Field Designer Number One: "Hey..I got it. Left field can be 350 feet short, we'll put three different sized walls, a bunch of curves and angles, and we'll even slap a flag pole out in center to show the great state of Texas and our wonderfully, patriotic president how proud we are of our country."
Field Designer Number Two: "Wait, wait, wait. I got it. Let's make left field 320 feet, then let's put the flag pole on a hill so the flag can be higher, this way W can see it all the way from the Oval Office."
Rest of Field Designers, simultaneously: "Ha. Ha. Ha. That's funny Mike. Let's do it."
Field Designer Number Three: "Let's get drunk first."
Rest of Field Designers, simultaneously: "Good Idea."
This is how the Astro's official site explains the field: "Three wall heights, various angles in the corners and power alleys, a 30-degree, uphill slope - "Tal's Hill" - for a center field warning track, and a flag pole in the field of play create unique actions for any ball that gets past an outfielder."
Could you imagine trying to explain to Roberto Clemente or Stan Musial or Willie Mays or any other baseball great, "Um yea, things are little different here. The sizes of the walls are completely different every ten feet or so. These walls create a bunch of weird shapes and stuff too, by the way. Then there's a flag pole and a big hill in centerfield, so be careful. We really think it will create unique action."
Those guys would have sat down and said, "screw this. I gave up playing street ball in alleyways when I was ten."
It won an award, "Most Outstanding Civil Engineering Project." That's great. Only it's not a civil engineering project, it's a damn baseball stadium.
It actually surprises me that they don't have frisbees as bases, a chain-link fence in right field, and a dinner bell that Mrs. Biggio rings when supper is ready.
There's only one thing stupider than the design of this ballpark: the idiots in baseball's hierarchy that allowed it.
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