There's been a lot of talk over the last couple weeks about the ball carrying further than it did at the old ballpark. Just look at the pounding the Indians put on the Yanks on Saturday afternoon. The Yanks, for their own part, have scored all but two of their runs on this opening homestand via the long ball. But there's gotta be something else to this. After all, the dimensions are exactly the same and the field faces in the same direction as the old Yankee Stadium, right? Well, not exactly, according to Greg Rybarczyk of the website Hit Tracker, who did an interview with Steve of WasWatching.com.

According to Rybarczyk, there is a big difference in the angles of the walls wrapping around the outfield in the two stadiums (I am interpreting this as saying that the dimensions are the same where the markings on the wall are, but I'm not sure that's exactly what he said). Rybarczyk posted a diagram showing the difference between the two walls. He also cited a possible difference in the baseballs this season, seeing that home runs are up quite a bit league-wide so far this season.

Interesting stuff. It looks like there's something to this after all. Yesterday I was just chalking this up to Tim McCarver's refusal to acknowledge that a 22-run game could just be the result of lousy pitching.

(via Peter Abraham)