Bronx Bandbox

In an effort to combat the insidious effects of stepped-up steroid policing on home run totals and lemmo attendance, the New York Yankees have downsized new Yankee Stadium, going so far as to make the famed short porch in right field even shorter than it was in the House that Ruth Built. Not that they're copping to it, even as a nearly unprecedented barrage of longballs flies into those $275 seats beyond the right field wall. The official story from Yankee top brass points the blame at a "wind tunnel" effect owing to this or that architectural particularity of their luxury crib. However, this recent AP story suggests although that the Yankees have maintained the illusion of a historically accurate playing field by carefully choosing where to paint the distances on the fences, the dimensions are indeed shorter (click here for a nice comparison sketch on the muckraking blog, Pinetar Rag). How much shorter? Plenty shorter--the AP article also refers to an AccuWeather study indicating that a full 19% of the homers hit through June 9 would have stayed in the old ball yard, meaning more doubles, triples or--the ultimate buzz kill for the lemmos--outs.