The Rangers have announced the dimensions for Globe Life Field via a press release posted to Twitter by Sam Blum of the Dallas Morning News. The 2020 season will mark the Rangers’ first in their new ballpark in Arlington after 26 seasons in the stadium original known, aptly, as the Ballpark In Arlington. Globe Life Field is set to open officially on March 23, 2020, just across the street from Globe Life Park.
The distances of the wall from home plate has been orchestrated with a rather inventive flourish to honor players whose numbers have been retired by the Rangers. The new park will be 329 feet down the left field line, to honor Adrian Beltre’s #29, 407 feet to straight away centerfield, in honor of Ivan Rodriguez’s #7, 410 feet to the deepest parts of the ballpark just to the left and right of dead center, in honor of Michael Young’s #10, and 326 feet down the right field line, in honor of Johnny Oates’ #26, who managed the club from 1995 to 2001.
Franchise history is also immortalized in the power alleys: 372 feet to the left field power alley to commemorate the team’s first year in Arlington (1972) and 374 feet to the right field power alley to commemorate The Turnaround Gang, the 1974 squad that went from 59 to 84 wins to record the first winning season in Rangers’ team history. The walls will be eight feel tall from foul pole to foul pole. Not to be forgotten, there will also be a distance marker 334 feet from home plate in left to honor Nolan Ryan’s #34.
In a recent piece from the Dallas Morning News, Evan Grant quotes Rob Matwick, the Rangers’ VP of Business Operations, as saying, “We think the park is going to play fair. We have taken the design and done testing in wind tunnels. But in fairness, until we start playing games, we won’t really know.”
There is certainly the possibility that the park will play differently depending on if the dome is open or closed, as well. The 5.5 acre retractable roof was closed for the first time yesterday morning. Work will continue for the next few months in preparation for the official opening just before Opening Day.
Kind of cool, kind of cheesy.
Kind of embarrassing if they later find they have to adjust the distances.
Right? It would’ve been better to adjust the fence heights in spots instead. Just like Pittsburgh’s salute to Clemente and the 22 foot fence in RF.
OMG dude Clemente wore # 21
Rob is that you?
He has been drinking a lot of bud tonight!
Dimensions seem fair. Shouldnt have to adjust
Sounds stupid to have spots deeper than CF to both left and right of dead center, to boot.
All the parks that have a straight wall in center have that.
Agree—nice tribute to a LOT of players, etc. I’m just glad this franchise isn’t too steep in a great tradition. The outfield wall may have had to be constructed in a zig-zag pattern.
Still nothing better than the Clemente wall in Pittsburgh. Pretty sure that will never be equaled.
Except they did it in SF first with the wall in RF 24 feet high for Willie Mays.
Yeah, it is kinda corny
Texas takes to air conditioning like props to aviators.
” done testing in wind tunnels”
Did you use a superball?
They never honor Juan Gonzalez
I’m a huge Juando fan – but he could care less about baseball now.
Rangers wanted to bring him back for the September celebrations and he wanted no part.
How much less could he care?
About 19 percent.
So one of the dimensions will be 319 feet?
Brilliant.
Well that’s just sad. I wonder what he is bitter about…..
If the article sited is accurate… the taxpayers are on the hook for 1.6 BILLION dollars.
Gotta be a better way.
usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2016/10/18/rangers-s…
I hate the corporate stadium names. Call it Rangers Park and give Globe Life free advertising/promotions.
At least it wasn’t Enron or Wrigley Field.
It was Wrigley field because the Wrigleys owned it
Its been Wrigley Field for over 100 years and the Wrigley Company has nothing to do with it. So the comparison to Enron or other Companies makes no sense
Did you know that a lot of people think “Fenway” is so cool because it’s not a corporate sponsor? But the actual history might be that in the early 1900s when it was built it was financed by the “Fenway Real Estate Company” (or something like that) so it’s actually possible that Fenway was the first corporately named stadium even though most people think it’s just named that because of its location. I think I heard that on a Fenway tour at some point or something like that.
Jeff Zanghi – “It might be” ??? You ‘might’ be wrong.
Try Google. It was easy.
Nothing to do with it? Dude, William Wrigley of the Wrigley Company owned the team. Literally named it after himself and the company.
I can’t like this enough times.
Rangers Ballpark in Arlington was perfect, but money tho
Shows how dumb voters are when they are OK with a sport team to get free tax payers money but angry if its for education. That billion could have been better spent on infrastructure of roads and transportation instead of free money to a billionaire that owns a sports team.
well, it’s texas! if angels decide to build a new ball park, team will pay for it.
Accurate
The voters have spoken!
Sports > education!
Maybe because of the boost a ballpark and team brings to the local economy, versus the drain on social services that results from kids despite the constant increases in taxes and levies?
MeatMissile – “There is no doubt that professional sports franchises and stadiums generate a significant amount of economic activity, but is the impact on the local economy positive, negative, or neutral? Studies have shown that, while franchises can give the economy a boost in the short term, there are little to no long-term positive effects.”
Here is the study results…
digitalcommons.bryant.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti…
Sad but so true
stupid
I just get tired of sports being all about money. I grew playing with other people who liked playing baseball. We identified as players. It didn’t matter if we could get something out of it. We just liked playing.
Who relates baseball to life insurance? If you go to a game and your team wins do you celebrate by buying life insurance?
So then the beer-named stadiums are OK?
Yeah, cuz I drink beer. To include Miller and Busch. Not picky!
Stadium has not been the Ballpark in Arlington for quite a few years!
It’s Globe Life Park going to Globe Life Field.
Yes that’s what the article says.
What was wrong with original ballpark? I thought it was one of the nicer ones in MLB. It had that modern classic look.
No roof, too hot for both fans and players.
Heat. It could get dangerously hot for some people in the late summer months.
Curiously, nobody realized it gets hot in Texas a few years ago when they built the place, Just build a new one. What’s a few billion matter?
Planned obsolescence.
It’s almost like it keeps getting hotter somehow.
WV17- It does keep getting hotter. Red states are not as hot though… because they’re in duh Nile.
LOL!
Unbearably hot in the summer, they needed a closed roof option
Read about it. It was a power move by Arlington to keep the team from moving to Dallas and an effort to attract more top free agents by getting the team and the fans out of the summer heat with AC and a roof.
Love the dimensions. That’s really cool
they are trying to improve the fan experience… not to mention they are hoping tune change helps pitchers in the Texas heat.
Because we all know that it’s the “fan experience” that counts these days, not the game itself.
Hard to watch the game if you’re dying of heat stroke.
Ask the Padres. Yep.
The Pitchers mound will be 34 feet from home plate to honor Nolan Ryan
I laughed hard enough to spit my coffee…
You know, he’d K people if the mound was 340 ft away lol.
They could have put a 34 ft marker that stretched from 34 ft from the mound to 34 ft from the place. It’d be 7.5 ft tall
Sprinkler positions in the outfield will be strategically placed to honor buddy bell and Julio Franco.
And a dumpster out back to honor Chuck Norris.
You don’t have to sprinkle turf.
They’ll be honorary
non functional sprinklers…..
They also stated the nearest rest room will be two hundred and fifty two million feet from home plate to honor A -Rod.
Ironically enough, I read that Nolan Ryan’s record fastball (measured > 100mph at that time in the 1970s) that he pitched in the 9th inning of a game in Anaheim, actually would have clocked in at 109 mph the way pitches are measured today.
In the 1970’s, speed was measured in front of home plate; today, it’s measured leaving the pitcher’s hand.
I think Nolan could probably still be a decent back-end starter for many teams today. Dude’s final pitch was 98mph with a torn UCL. And let’s not even get into how he bear-stomped Robin Ventura into oblivion…..LOL
Interesting “fetish” for honoring the old players… kind of lame to modify the dimensions just to do that.
What about Juan Gonzalez?
Juan’s gone
No juan thought about him.
How many championships has he juan?
He juan juan in 1995 with San Juan.
I’ll see myself out now.
Why would you Juana bring him up ? ?
$19 for juan beer
Juan of the best sluggers in his prime and best ever slugger in franchise history and TWO-TIME MVP JUAN!
A dedication to a manager who led the team for 6 seasons to no titles and a 1-9 record in the playoffs? Oates won ONE playoff game in his time with Texas. Huh???
If your team has no good history, you probably shouldn’t highlight it in this way. Just a thought.
Insert: Greta Thundberg ‘How dare you” gif
They won 3 division titles in those 6 years after never making the playoffs in franchise history. Just because you have a light history doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t honor it. What kind of sense does that make?
Yeah, the Seattle Mariners honor their one and a half good seasons ad nauseum.
Sounds like Oakland’s playoff series record during the Beane era.
In honor of Juan Gonzalez, Alex Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro, vendors will be selling supplements.
They will also honor the zero championships by having zero bathrooms.
If you’re going to bring them up yo7bmights as well bring Ivan Rodriguez up along with Canseco and Sierra.
Make the foul poles giant needles to honor Rafael Palmeiro and Jose Canseco.
Now we’re getting somewhere! Send in your application for employment with the Rangers of Texas.
Put a statue of Canseco in right field, and write the ground rules so you can hit a homer that bounces off the statue’s head
Raphael: A José Canseco bat?! Don’t tell me you paid money for this!
…and that was his reputation in 1990!
Barely bigger than Yankee Stadium, but somehow all the Yankee haters on this site will find a way to claim the Yankees have an unfair advantage playing in a “little league stadium” while ignoring the fact that Texas now has their own little league stadium and Boston has the monster that is a shorter distance from the plate than every left field line in the league.
The monster makes sense. Fenway RF foul pole is shortest porch in the game
I loved watching a game from old Tiger stadium short porch. It was an upper deck that hung out over RF. Towering pop ups had a chance of going out. Felt like you were right over the field.
Now that’s a classic stadium that should have been preserved like Fenway…..
june 1st, ’20, mike trout hits the longest home run ever in globe life field breaking gargantuan display!
329 and 326 down the lines.
I get paying homage to the greats but too short.
Power alleys and straight away center field are fine.
A great many stadiums are short at the foul poles. Not unusually shallow at all,
I’m aware of that, and I just think down the lines distances should not be too short. Wrigley is 355 down the left field line.
I think 340 sounds about right for starters.
Most stadiums are shorter than 340 down the lines. For example, Busch Stadium III, generally considered a slight pitcher’s park, measures 335 and 336 down the lines.
I’m in favor of a stadium going 300 to CF and 250 down the lines. Then 100 foot fences all the way around. Would be like those little league kids playing in Cooperstown.
Fans of the Ground Rule Double are triggered.
We’d still see Lauriano rob a couple dingers a year
Aptly shouldn’t be used with commas.
I have never heard of the size of a roof being referred to in acres before. That’s…epic.
Astros have some trash cans for sale …
… Slightly beaten up.
They should name the place after Nolan Ryan and just move along.
Or at least name the street after him 5714 Nolan Ryan Drive
Or the Ryan Expressway?
Opening up on my birthday. Sometimes I don’t get why teams get a new stadium. thw Marlins never should have gotten one. Dodgers Stadium is twice as old plus 5years added as GlobeLife Park. They’ll probably never get a new stadium which is good. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are nearly 4 times as old as GlobeLife. They probably wont get new ones either.
If you’ve ever been to Wrigley the neighborhood atmosphere is just awesome. You just can find another Neighborhood like that.
Good luck actually getting to Wrigley and finding a place to park, though.
I like the idea of incorporating those numbers! Baseball is history in a microcosm.
I still think of their current ballpark as “new.” I still remember the reports when it first opened and the rain caused all sorts of problems.
Works for me. In addition to the games, following baseball is all about remembering players, jersey numbers, stats, teams, etc. It’s about remembering and treasuring and bemoaning. The player-oriented distance numbers help set those players in stone (or wood, or padding, or whatever the fences are made of) for the future, especially for new fans being introduced to the game.
The corners are a bit longer than Yankee stadium, the alleys are a bit shorter, center is about the same.
Ugh, cut it out with the gimmicks and just make the ballparks practical! Just give us a symmetrical elisped-shaped outfield wall with fair dimensions all around and at a fair and uniform height. That’s all we want!
That’s what they did. A practical, elipsed shaped ballpark with fair dimensions. And they gave a nod to the players (and coach) who’ve done the most for the franchise. Paying a little respect, giving a nod to tradition, extending some history to new fans coming along. You’ve never seen retired numbers? It’s kind of like that. You hate that, when Jerseys are hanging in a basketball arena? That’s sports. What exactly are you whining about?
Idea is cool, but dumb. Why don’t you add a hill in cf? Idiots.
With banged up trash can
The left field foul line will be in honor of Josh Hamilton and right field will in honor of Ron Washington
“Chalk lines”
400 down the lines, 500 to straight away CF. Place small video cams between the first two numbers. Pay homage to the 4 and 5 ERA pitchers from The Ballpark in Arlington.
How does this play fair (according to one of their VPs) ? I suppose by today’s standards … 329 and 326 down the lines and 372 and 374 in the power alleys. Gone are the days of 335-340 down the lines and 385 in the power alleys.
Where’s the 2 time MVP, HR and RBI leader? 419 left alley or 19′ fence?