Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Kauffman Stadium

Even if you’re not a baseball fan you should still read this (I included jokes)…

Baseball has cranked back up again and this is going to be one of those essays that some people love and other people hate because it’s about Baseball and watching games in Kauffman Stadium and how different ballparks change what we see.

It has long been my position that the more you know about Baseball the more interesting Baseball becomes, but not everyone agrees and if you hate Baseball you’re not exactly dead to me, but you do have one foot in the grave and the other one on a roller skate and a nagging cough which might turn into something more serious.

But hang in there and maybe you’ll learn something that makes Baseball slightly more interesting than mowing your lawn which I’m guessing you don’t want to do anyway.

It’s a Huge Ballpark

Kauffman Stadium has one of if not the biggest outfields in the Big Leagues when it comes to square footage (according to the internet, only Coors Field is bigger, but I don’t totally trust the internet on this subject or the number of single women in my area who want to meet me) but what this means to you the fan is you need to quit complaining about how few home runs the Royals hit—the park’s just too big.

When we were all still employed in Baseball, I asked Royals GM Dayton Moore how many home runs he thought Adam Dunn would hit if he played for the Royals and Dayton said:

“Adam Dunn would never play here.”

Because Adam Dunn made a living hitting home runs and Kauffman Stadium would cut down the number of home runs Dunn hit which would not help Dunn’s career so the Royals would have to overpay to get Dunn to come to KC and then they wouldn’t get the home runs they paid for.

The Royals were 20^th in home runs last season – which is better than average, they’ve often been last – but because of those huge dimensions, once a ball splits a gap it’s going to roll for a long long time which explains why last year the Royals were 12^th in doubles and 3^rd in triples.

So forget fly ball hitters, they won’t play well in Kauffman; you want line drive hitters who can scamper after they hit one.

And Now A Word About Triples

Triples are mostly hit to right field because that’s the field furthest and/or farthest from third base and that’s also why right fielders need strong arms and Kauffman Stadium makes triples even more likely by having rounded corners.

The rounded corners means a ball that gets under the outfield pads acts like it’s in a pinball machine and shoots out by the bullpen gate. Any outfielder who chases a ball directly into the right field corner is making a mistake because he actually needs to run to the right field bullpen gate and wait there.

I know this.

People whose original language is Mandarin know this.

If there are UFOs and space aliens who like to conduct anal probes on hillbillies, the space aliens and hillbillies know this.

And yet…

The Royals lost their Opening Day game when the Cleveland Guardians Kyle Manzardo (at first I wrote the Cleveland “Indians” because Cleveland Guardians is lame and we all think “Cleveland Indians” anyway and bullshit if you deny this) hit a ball down into the right field corner and Royals right fielder Hunter Renfro ran to the wrong spot—directly into the corner—and turned a double into a triple which should never ever never happen to a Royals right fielder because those corners are famous.

Renfro’s got no excuse because he played 120 games for the Royals last year and I should not know more about playing Kauffman’s right field corner than he does and I’m guessing he’s been told this repeatedly, but forgot in the heat of the moment and more on that before we’re through.

Now Back To That Huge Outfield

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention to Our Theoretical National Pastime (Our Actual National Pastime is bitching about things on social media, including people who bitch and social media) Baseball is currently way too in love with home runs which is kind of like watching your daughter date a Young Republican because I’m pretty sure that’s how Eva Braun and Hitler started out.

And because Baseball is Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs when it comes to the homers, teams are willing to play horseshit defenders if they hit enough of them.

And now a word about that…

The people who measure everything in numbers don’t take defense as seriously as offense because it’s hard to measure defense (you’re trying to count things that don’t happen) and as more than one ballplayer told me: “If the numbers guys don’t know how to measure something, they ignore it and pretend it doesn’t matter.”

But a run kept off the board matters just as much as a run put on the board and if you don’t believe me, do the math.

OK, so now you’ve got some horseshit defenders playing the outfield in Kauffman Stadium and horseshit defenders think it’s easier to come in on a fly ball than go back on a fly ball (probably because it is) so those horseshit defenders play too deep.

And here we’re going to quote outfield guru Rusty Kuntz who taught me pretty much everything I know (which isn’t much, but still more than average) about outfield positioning.

Straight-Up

• Walk from first base to second base, keep going for 70-to-75 steps and that’s the “straight-up” position for left field.

• Third base to second base, 70-to-75 steps and that’s “straight-up” in right field.

• Home to second, 70-to-75 steps and that’s “straight-up” for center although centerfielders can’t play true straight-up because they’d be looking at the pitcher’s back, so to see home plate they’re positioned off to one side or the other.

All positioning is supposed to be done in relation to second base because it’s always in the same place in every ballpark while outfield walls vary, but insecure outfielders position themselves five steps off the warning track no matter what park they’re playing in and that includes Yellowstone which as I understand it is another park it’s hard to hit a ball out of.

Which means…

We see a pitcher get blooped, bleeped, dinked and doinked to death and think it’s the pitcher’s fault when actually it’s the outfielders who are too scared to play shallow.

And if you’ve never been around humans and think just because a coach tells someone to do something (like play shallow or don’t chase a ball into the corner) that the person involved will listen and do exactly what he’s told, I can tell you—once again everybody involved is no longer in Baseball—the Royals had a hard time getting Nori Aoki to play where they wanted him to play because once they positioned Nori he’d subtly move back to where he wanted to play.

Just because someone tells you to do something it doesn’t mean you’re going to do it, and can I get an “Amen” from all the married members of the audience?

Positioning Cards

But the safe move is to play where the coaches tell you to play because then if a ball falls in, it’s their fault, not yours. And these days they tell players where to play with “positioning cards” and if you look for “baseball positioning cards” on Google Images the picture below is the first image you’ll see and that’s my hand holding a Royals outfield card which would seem to indicate no other baseball reporter was that interested in the subject – before or since – not that I’m bitter or anything.

Anyway…

You start from the straight-up position and if the outfielder looks at his card and it says G1 that means one step toward the gap and L1 means one step toward the line.

So players and coaches have to know where straight-up is and (no idea of they still do this) but outfielders would walk off “straight-up” and drop a handful of sunflower seeds on that spot so they could find it again without counting.

Rusty said if the groundskeepers would let him, he’d spray paint a white dot on the “straight-up” positions, but since groundskeepers are fussy, outfield coaches have to stand in the same exact spot every defensive half inning (they’ll be in the dugout opening closest to the outfield) and find a landmark behind the outfielders:

“When my left fielder is directly under the ‘A’ in the All-State sign, he’s straight up.”

When I first wrote about this the director of the Royals broadcast thanked me because they’d asked an outfield coach to move so they could get a better shot of the field and the coach said “I can’t” and the director said:

“We thought he was just being a dick.”

If you want to know more about this, here’s a video I made with former Royals outfield coach Mitch Maier, but be warned the Star has managed to insert five commercials into a two minute and 10 second video:

https://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article210238024.html

If you watched the video and thought “Lee looks like shit with a goatee” let’s both blame Eric Hosmer because he told me “chicks dig the scruffy look,” but turns out what chicks actually dig is 6’4” handsome ballplayers with millions of dollars in the bank.

Kauffman Plays Fair

That’s what Rusty said one day and when I asked what’s that meant Rusty explained that because the K’s outfield wall was uniform the game was decided by the players’ athleticism, not some ballpark architect who decided to put a weird porch in right field or have a scoreboard in play or add an incline in center field or a trampoline in the left center gap or a craft brewery behind second base and I never thought about that until Rusty mentioned it and if they ever build a new ballpark, how much you want to bet they fuck it up by adding some really cute ballpark quirks?

And finally, here’s a video of Rusty explaining outfield signs and strategy and it’s well worth your time even if you think nothing else has been so far:

OK, this is about how long my usual posts are so we’re going to stop for today and pick it up again tomorrow and if you’re one of those “almost dead to me” Baseball haters, don’t worry, before the end of the week Donald Trump will have done at least two dozen more appalling things and I’ll draw cartoons making fun of him and them.

See you back here tomorrow.