I do not believe that this photo method of measuring is accurate unless due to “perspective”.
Just take a picture of a ruler at an angle (yes the pictured he used here is at an angle), and you will see that the inches closer to the camera are “longer” than the inches furthest from the camera.
He is then in effect repeating the size of the “closer” inches on the rules in his illustration, and using them to simulate measurements at distances that are further away from the lens.
That being said, I am NOT claiming that the bases are in the proper place, just that THIS method cannot be used to make the determination.
As for the marker placements relative to the arch, here’s how I looked at it:
If you take the Shea picture cited and (literally) draw a straight line from home plate to the fence, it actually lands slightly to the right of the 410 marker. Or, put differently, the 410 marker skews to the left, relative to the plate. That means the picture was taken from slightly to the right of home plate (if you move to your right for a picture, things further away will skew to your left, relative to things closer to you). As a result, everything is slightly off to the left relative to things behind it (and more so as you go further back in the picture). So, home plate should actually line up with a point slightly further over to the right, either within or just to the right of the last arch at Citi.
As for Alex’s rough distance calculation, it’s a good attempt, but very rough and problematic. As you go further back in the picture, things that are actually far apart will, of course, naturally seem closer together. The amount of this effect will vary depending on your distance to the subject, the size of the subject(s), the angle of the picture, etc. So, unfortunately, it’s basically impossible to tell from this picture and this kind of calculation with a method as rough as the one Alex used. You could try to measure how many pixels per feet it is from home to the rubber, and then from the rubber to 2nd, but they’re so small in the picture that it probably won’t work. The same thing is true for comparing parking spot width near the plate to that of spots closer to where the 410 marker would be.
My own method, when these pictures first came out, was to go to Google and look at the satellite image of Shea. I spotted up 2nd and home relative to the now-defunct traffic circle and the road leading to it that comes under the highway, then compared those relations to where the markings are relative to the highway. Based on that rough eyeball job, it seems like they’re close enough to the right spots (in terms of distance to Citi) that you can’t say otherwise based on my method. But, it’s still entirely possible that they’re off by a couple of feet.
If the markers actually are in the wrong spots, be it by 2 feet or 20 feet, and no matter in what respect they’re wrong (placement left to right, distance to Citi, whatever), there’s only one thing you can say about it: this could only happen to/with the Mets.
Posted by Brian to The Mets Police at May 31, 2009 12:04 AM
Posted by Anonymous to The Mets Police at May 31, 2009 10:29 AM
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You definitely can’t use the cut and paste method to figure that out. As he says, the ruler photo is the perfect example.
Anyway, I *highly* doubt they are in the *exact* place the real bases were. Close, maybe. Exact, no way.