Two weeks back, I visited the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Among a host of fascinating motor vehicles stood an exhibit on cars used in films, among them the famed DeLorean used to film Back to the Future. I thought for a moment about what I might do if I could drive the DeLorean, if I could visit any point in time. But I quickly decided that it was better not to meddle with the past, better to find ways to live my live in its proper place and time.
But last night, a voice called to me
as I fell asleep. It whispered, “Kyle Schwarber at the Baker Bowl”. The Baker Bowl, home to the Phillies between 1887 and 1938, had a legendarily shallow right field wall. The foul pole was just 280 feet from home. You can imagine what would happen if you put a lefty, pull-hitting home run hammerer like Kyle Schwarber there. But I didn’t want to just imagine it.
So I did the only reasonable thing and went to the Petersen Museum after hours to borrow the DeLorean. It turns out, though, that the museum’s loan program only applies to other educational institutions, and not to individuals, even if they have a really fun idea. It also turns out that the guards don’t appreciate it when you try to drive one of the cars. So I had to make a break for it, escaping in the first car I could hotwire (the 1963 Chevrolet C10 used in filming of Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2), and driving to Schwarber’s place to apologize for the failure of my time travel plan. But he must have been pretty mad, because he pretended not to know me, saying things like “Who are you?” and “Why are you at my house?”, and “Is that the 1963 Chevrolet C10 from Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2?”.
So we’re gonna have to figure out how Kyle Schwarber would hit at the Baker Bowl the boring way.
Citizens Bank Park’s right field wall is 330 feet deep at the foul pole, and 369 feet deep at the power alley. The Baker Bowl was 280 feet at the pole, and 300 feet in the power alley. The Bowl’s right field wall was also extremely tall, at least after it got built up to account for the death of the dead-ball era. But I’m going to ignore the height of the wall here, in part because I want to see how high we can make Schwarber’s home run total go, and in part because I want to spare poor Boom-Boom Beck from the terror of hearing Schwarber rain endless balls upon the metal wall that gave him his nickname.
So let’s look at all of the balls that fell into the gap between where the Baker Bowl wall stood, and where the CBP wall stands now. If you use Baseball Savant to run a search for fly balls Schwarber hit to right field at Citizens Bank Park that traveled between between 280 and 369 feet, between 2022 and the present, you get a chart that looks like this:
If I had a scale diagram of the Baker Bowl to overlay with Citizens Bank Park, the task of figuring out how many of those fly outs would’ve been homers at the Baker Bowl would be easy. Unfortunately, I don’t have one of those. I’m sure there’s a way to figure out what I want to know with available data, but I’m not really that tech-savvy. So I came up with a quick and dirty measure that’s either kinda clever or just stupid: the Baker Bowl wall was fifty feet shallower at the pole than the CBP wall, and the CBP warning track is about 15 feet wide. So I just have to eyeball 3.3 warning tracks worth of distance, and we have a rough estimate of where the Bowl wall would be.
That’s an inaccurate way of doing it in the first place, and on top of that I don’t know how to properly account for the angle of the Baker Bowl wall. Or the height of it. So this is really unscientific. My analysis uses Lifebuoy Soap, and it still stinks. But it sort of illustrates a point…
Which is that Kyle Schwarber would have a bunch more homers as a Phillie if the team was still playing at the Baker Bowl. Roughly 28 more, probably a few less because of inaccuracies with the angle and my inability to account for the wall height.
That’s not really a surprise: put a lefty home run hitter in a park with a shallow right field wall and you’re going to see good results. Still, it does sate my thwarted time-traveling dreams, somewhat. I’ll never see Schwarber raining balls over the Baker Bowl wall, but I can imagine it.
I can also imagine being acquitted on charges of theft of a car used to film a Twilight film. But until then, please bail me out, Kyle, I’m supposed to be at a Memorial Day barbecue tomorrow.
