Take a look at this rendering of the new baseball stadium that I got from the city’s web site.
Click on the picture to enlarge it.
The left field looks huge, deliberately drawn to look never-ending. A local reporter (of the old school) recently posted an entry on a blog saying that it would be 250 feet from home plate to the left field fence.
The incredible shrinking outfield
The major league baseball site indicates that a distance of 320 feet or more is the preferred distance. The absolute minimum is 250 feet. If the reporter is correct and the left field fence will be 250 feet from home plate, then why does this picture lead us to believe differently?
Looking at the drawing, I wonder where home runs will go. Will they land in the party buildings in right and center field? Will they bombard the children’s play area in center left field? Will they crash into the high wall that will have to be built to compensate for the short left field? Will they escape the field and land on a windshield on Santa Fe street? There is even a rumor on the street that the standard bats will be shortened in order to compensate.
I hope that none of this is true.
Two step
According to the city web site the stadium fits. The picture makes us think the outfield is huge. Word on the street is that it barely meets the minimum size required.
Pay attention to what the cabal is doing. They carefully release their version of the truth to us in multiple steps. They initially publish numbers that are wildly wrong. They make statements that are simply not completely true. When an issue has had a chance to settle down they come back with more accurate facts.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Home Runs make for an exciting game 🙂
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so does bullets flying over from j-town. guess they could compensate with having free bullet proof vest night and free ambulance ride to umc night.
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Will – Sorry for the “error”. My comment was in response to Tim Collins’ suggestion that lots of home runs make for an exciting game. Given that you and I both played at higher levels, I would hope that you might agree that the true beauty and excitement of the game involves a lot more than home runs.
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Spoken like one of the many downtown stadium proponents who know nothing about baseball.
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your right. i only played high school and college, but what do i know.
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more home runs does make it more exciting, but for safety reasons i believe a boston style green wall will have to be put in left field. more money ? probably. balls landing on cars on the interstate or sante fe will not be good. balls will fly farther because of our altitude and humidity also. if someone from juarez starts spraying bullets towards the stadium it will be exciting and dangerous. hopefully, it wont happen, but i wouldnt bet on it.
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Well, what you see there in that picture is called an “architectual rendering” and it should not be taken seriously – EVER. Remember the renderings of Hotel Baghdad when Scherr was squeezing the city for money? Yeah, looks nothing like the picture showed to the public.
I’m not saying anyone is wrong or right here, but that picture is for suckers. Do not base your expectations off of that rendering. The field will look nothing like that. Why architects get to get away with that crap is beyond me.
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You are so right David K. How an intelligent bunch like Joyce and the city reps (that voted for the stadium) were suckered is beyond comprehension.
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The professor from Notre Dame (who is an expert on minor league baseball stadiums) came to El Paso to discuss the stadium with our “esteemed” city leaders at the time. He recommended against building the stadium at the city hall site because it was too small and because it didn’t have adequate traffic flow for a sports stadium. As usual, our city fathers felt they knew more than the experts and went ahead with the city hall demolition and stadium construction. According to an acquaintance who has her degrees in urban planning, the professor couldn’t believe we went ahead with the project anyway.
The home run fence in left field will have to be like the big green wall at Fenway Park in Boston, or home runs will be crashing thru car windows on Santa Fe Street.
On another note, isn’t it interesting that there was such a rush to raze city hall so that the stadium would be ready for opening day in April, 2014. Mountainstar Sports is covering its bets that the stadium won’t be ready in time by contracting with the City of Tucson to use the Kino Sports Complex in case the stadium isn’t ready in El Paso. In all likelihood, our stadium will NOT be ready by next Spring, as most stadiums of this size don’t get constructed in eleven or twelve months. The rush was fabricated so we “crazies” couldn’t get our act together in time to stop this waste of taxpayer dollars. Now the El Paso Times (cheerleader for the “progressives” who wanted to spend our money as fast as they could tax us) tells us in big headlines last Sunday that our taxes have hit a frightful high. Oh REALLY?! I’d like Joe Muench (official cheerleader at the Times) to explain how this obvious dilemma didn’t dawn on him or others on the editorial staff. No matter how you look at it Joe, the monkey is on the taxpayers’ backs now!
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