Are Bonds home run lengths totally accurate?
No. Home run distances are historically — and notoriously — inaccurate, calculated via mathematical formulas, specialized cameras, inexact eyeballing and old fashioned walking out the distance by foot. Some teams, like Boston, don’t even bother. Check out this excellent Wall Street Journal article for more information. Q: OK, so the home run distances are approximations. How about your estimates of where they cleared the park? A: Also guesses. And fairly crude ones at that. Along with date, opponent and distance, each Bonds home run came tagged with a letter code marking the general area it left the stadium. Stats, Inc. provided Page 2 with a radial chart (click to see popup) matching each letter to a portion of the field. Page 2 then matched groups of letters to the outfield distances available for each stadium: center, right, left, down both foul lines, and sometimes a few additional (often quirky) markers. In general, we broke things up as follows: C-E, left-field line; F-K, left;
