Hi Everyone,
I would like to make a HO Scale baseball field behind a school on my layout.
Does anyone know the proper dimensions? I have tried a google search but maybe I was not asking the right questions.[banghead]
Thanks,
David
If you Google “baseball field dimensions”, you’ll get several Google images that you can convert to your scale. Good luck
IIRC, a regulation baseball field is laid out with 90’ between the bases and 60’ 6" to the front of the pitching rubber. The outfield depth is determined by the age of the players and is usually around 300’ or more from home plate. Little League dimensions are smaller, with 60’ between bases (I think).
Been a LONG time since I needed that information!
Darrell, quiet…for now
Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball, College, and High School:
- 90 feet between the bases
- 60 feet 6 inches pitching rubber to home plate
- home plate to outfield fence varies.
Little League:
- 60 feet between the bases
- 46 feet pitching rubber to home plate.
- 200 feet home plate to outfield fence
- most Little League fields have dirt infields.
Nick
Keep in mind the size of the area you’re talking about - if a Little League field is 200 ft from home plate to the fence, that’s over 2 actual feet in HO scale. Then if you add bleachers, dugouts, concessions stands, etc., it can eat up a lot of layout real estate in a hurry. If you don’t have that much space available, your best bet is to model a small portion of the field on the actual layout (say the 1st or 3rd baseline), then paint the rest on the backdrop. Either that, or shrink the size down to N-scale for a “forced perspective” look.
Good luck!
What’s “Baseball”? [}:)]
Seriously… I’ve often wondered about modelling a scratch game in a factory parking lot or similar. Any suggestions? Sources of figures? Do people use a different ball to reduce the distance it goes and/or not smash so many windows?
Is there any way someone not brought up with the game can have a clue what is going on? American Football I can follow… Baseball [%-)] [%-)] [%-)]
As a Brit who lives in the US and was not brought up on the baseball, I can say with some assurance that you can not only have a clue what is going on, you can positively grow to love the game. All I can say is that it is a darned site easier to teach a Brit baseball than a Yank cricket (I have tried!) I follow the Cards who have provided a roller coaster season of excitement spiced with inumerable frustrations.
As for a parking lot game, consider a game called Kick ball. This nominally follows the rules of baseball (bases, pitching etc) but uses a soccer ball instead that is kicked rather than hit with a bat. My kids love this game and it is a staple of school recess.
It is indeed fascinating that layout builders come to the forum looking for information that allows them to reproduce slices of 12-inch scale life that have nothing to do with railroading.
I can picture that there could conceivably be a market for a Kalmbach book on nothing but this kind of stuff: the dimensions of ball fields (such we are discussing here), as well as some really truly esoteric items for the anal-retentive mind — oh, things like . .
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- the dimensions and apperance of a septic field being installed (for someone modeling a home under construction);
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- the appearance and dimensions of cell phone transmission towers, which are coming to dominate the landscape in many places;
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- the “official” dimensions of a wood casket. Now, before you laugh at this, we all know that cemeteries on layouts have been around for decades. I actually know of one that depicts a burial, casket and all, in process. So, if some modeler is going to do this it might as well feature an authentically dimensioned, scale casket.
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Ok, I have a 12" area to work with, from home plate, The field would be in the very front where you would see the layout, being behind a school, I was also going to add jungle gym and playground equipment. Maybe a football field would be a better idea?
David
OH! it may also be relevant that my era is the mid-40`s in the mountains of Virginia.
Gears turning in head!!![:-^]
I can go better than a funeral! I’ve seen a Dutch layout with a Coroner’s exhumation! Police barriers, press; the lot!
At least kalmbach would know where to come to get the information!
You could also model a street game of stick-ball or half-ball. Imagine a narrow Philadelphia street with row homes on both sides, cars parked everywhere, and a gang of kids hitting a cut-in-half rubber ball with a broom handle, piece of pipe, or whatever is available. The Buick on the right is 1st, manhole cover is 2nd and Eddy’s little brother is 3rd (if he would just stand still). I’m not from Philly, but we used to play our own version in my hometown in the 50’s. Our “field” was called “dirty alley” – it deserved the name. Hmm……maybe if I move that gas station out of the way……
Imagine a baseball breaking a window on a nearby house.
Sue
Yes, it sure as hell is more difficult for a Yank to learn cricket!!! I remember way back when I was in the US Army we had on our staff an Aussie exchange officer who attempted to teach same to his US counterparts and only succeeded in frustrating himself.
These dimensions are correct, but who can fit them on a layout. I built a little league field on my previous layout. You can see a couple of pics below (I’m not a photographer, sorry). I compressed my field to have 45’ baselines and 120’ outfiled fence. I have some serious baseball people in my family and no one ever noticed. Just be sure you keep in in scale to itself. Youcan see the batting team in the dugout. You cannot really see the bleechers and fans in these pics, but they were there. All scratchbuilt too. The hard part was painting those N scale uniforms, as no baseball players were on the market at that time.
(click pics to enlarge)
Hope this helps,
Ron
an easier thing to model out by a factory parking lot would be a horseshoe pit(s), four guys, two at each end, small dirt holes with stakes, two guys standing one one end, the other two measuring the shoes in the pit.We used to play that years ago during lunch…If you’re not modeling a regulation field, during recess , we just set up bases so many feet apart, put pitchers mound somewhere in middle and played ball,easier to replicate, just bare spots in corners, but homeplate was always dug out some.In school we only were allowed a softball anyway and couldn’t hit towards building.
For scale dementions, just multiply the real dementions by 1/87 ( one over 87 ) for ho scale.
That’s because the Aussies don’t know how to play cricket [(-D][(-D][(-D]
For example…
They have never grasped the fine art of snatching defeat from the jaws of unavoidable victory.
They also have the ridiculous idea that they are supposed to win! [:-,] How crazy is that? [%-)]
I used a distance of 60’ between the bases for my ball diamond. It looks ok for a bunch of kids playing ball. The diamond is actually on a pop-up hatch cover, hence the visible edges (to be disguised later).
This post has been edited several times. I have finally gotten the pictures to post correctly. The trick was to switch browsers from Safari on my Mac to Firefox.
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i238/stripes2/Baseball3.jpg
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i238/stripes2/Baseball1.jpg
Thanks Colin, just what I wanted for a dirt poor school district. I will copy that, hope you don`t mind!
David