Opening Day marks the return of our national pastime, and with it some of baseball's most sacred traditions: The green of the grass. The crack of the bat. And, of course, the roar of baseball fans everywhere complaining about the dimensions at Yankee Stadium.
The home of the New York Yankees has become among the most reviled ballparks in the sport for opposing fans over the years, thanks to both one of the most inhospitable fan bases around and a right-field fence that turns even harmless pop-ups into potential home runs. The latter was very much on display on Opening Day against the Milwaukee Brewers, as the Bombers benefitted from not one but two dingers that probably wouldn't have been out just about anywhere else in the league.
First came a line drive off the bat of catcher Austin Wells that barely scraped over the wall:
Well(s) that was quick 💥
— MLB (@MLB) March 27, 2025
The first #OpeningDay home run comes off the bat of Austin Wells 💪 pic.twitter.com/0HZ3tGk6cj
And then, even more hilariously, a pop-up off the bat of Anthoy Volpe that fooled everybody — including broadcaster Joe Buck.
Joe Buck: "Here's a pop fly into right..."
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 27, 2025
And that's another home run into the Yankee Stadium (very) short porch. ⚾️🎙️ #MLB pic.twitter.com/Ns0ee1ENuN https://t.co/Ql9Zo3N5YS
Few things are more frustrating than watching your team give up runs for no other reason than a quirk of architecture. But just how big of an outlier is Yankee Stadium's short porch compared to the rest of the league? Let's dig in.
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Yankee Stadium dimensions: How right field compares to other ballparks
The short answer: very. Technically speaking, Yankee Stadium's right-field dimensions are just the third-shortest in MLB, ahead of both Fenway Park and Oracle Park.
Ballpark | Distance |
---|---|
Fenway Park | 302 |
Oracle Park | 309 |
Yankee Stadium | 314 |
Camden Yards | 318 |
PNC Park | 320 |
But that comes with some pretty serious caveats: Fenway is skewed by the Pesky Pole, while Oracle Park features some very pitcher-friendly wind conditions as well as a tall wall to help knock down potential home runs. Yankee Stadium, on the other hand, features ... well, just a regular old fence, and uniform dimensions heading out toward center.
So it's no surprise that it's among the friendliest parks in the league for lefty power, allowing more homers to left-handed hitters than anywhere but Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park (arguably the single most hitter-friendly environment in the league) and Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park. It is worth noting that, because right field is so small, Yankee Stadium takes away plenty of potential base hits; but we're betting opposing pitchers think that the wall-scrapers more than make up for it.