Yeah, that's it. Baker Bowl (technically National League Park when it opened in 1895) was considered advanced in its day (the first park made of bricks rather than wood), but it was shoved into the neighborhood; there was a hump in centerfield because the subway ran under it, and the RF wall was only 250 feet from home plate, which not only allowed for cheap home runs if you could loft the ball over the big tin fence, but made it easy for strong-armed RFs to rack up assists, as when the Phillies' Chuck Klein set the record with 44 in 1930.
In the version of the story that Roger Angell told in
Five Seasons, after "Boom-Boom" Beck woke up the dozing Hack by banging the ball off of the tin wall, Hack's ensuing throw to 2B was "the best he made all season" as Brooklyn manager Casey Stengel drily remarked. Not that it kept Casey from releasing him shortly thereafter, as noted above.
(While National League Park had made the step away from pure wood construction, originally the stands were still wooden, resulting in
the "Black Saturday" disaster of 1903, when 13-year-old Maggie Barry was being accosted/molested by homeless drunks outside the ballpark, and Maggie's screams of "Rape! Murder!" sent everyone on that side of the park scrambling to the top of the stand to see what was going down…only to find that what was actually going down was the wooden stand, as the aging timber cracked under the pressure (the new owners had refused to budget any money for repairs) and the crash killed 12 fans and injured 242 more. This is what led the owners to stop being cheap and build real stadiums of concrete and steel, beginning with Shibe Park and Forbes Field in 1909.)
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For a while, I wasn't certain that nothing but solo dingers would be enough to win the game, but if you stack them high enough, they can get the job done, I guess. At least scoring the majority our runs via the HR trot gives Mike Sarbaugh fewer chances to screw things up, right?
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I don't know if you endured the actual FOX-cast,
Westie, so here is Ken Rosenthal's Mets Mound Report:
Frankie Mount-ass will mount the mound on Tuesday, even though there's doubt that he's fully ready.
Sean Manaea pitched well in the minors on Friday; one more rehab start and he'll be good to go.
OTOH, Kodai "Moroi Hone" Senga has followed his usual progression from "it's nothing" to "it's just a strain" to "It's August, at earliest". Sigh.
("Moroi hone" means "brittle bones" in Japanese, says Google™ Translate. But you figured that out just from the "Kodia Senga" part, I'm sure.)