It is a math problem
based on the area of a circle. Except that a ball field is one
fourth of the circle with another fourth of a circle within it. And on
a grass infield you have a square within that smaller wedge.
Use a little league field with
a 60 foot length base path as an example.
The homerun fence is 200 feet
away from home plate. Home plate usually is at least 15 feet away from
the backstop fence behind the plate. So, the distance from the backstop
to the homerun fence is about 215 feet. The area of the ball park is one
fourth the area of a circle with a radius of 215. Area of a circle is
pie X radius squared. So, you have A = 215 * 215 * 3.14. This is about
145,000 square feet. Divide by 4 for the area of the ball park. You get
about 36,000 square feet for the whole ball park. This is about three
fourths of an acre.
Home to pitcher mound is 46
feet. Pitcher mound to back of infield dirt is 50 feet. Now this is where
you have bit of a fudge factor. Do you have grass on the foul area side
of your base path or is it dirt? If it is dirt, then from the backstop
to the back of the infield dirt is 15 + 46 + 50. 111 feet. Do the math
for a circle with a radius of 111 feet. A = 111 x 111 X 3.14. This is
about 39,000. Divide by 4. This is about 10,000 square feet for the area
that includes the infield dirt and turf. It is OK to round these off to
make the math easier.
Next, the infield turf area.
Base paths are 60 feet long and are typically 3 feet wide. This means
the grass area is a square that is 54 feet by 54 feet. So, the infield
grass area is about 2900 square feet. It is really less than that when
you account for the base cutouts and the mound, but for planning purposes
this number is close enough.
To be technical with this,
the mound area is 5 x 5 x 3.14 = about 80 square feet.
Now we subtract the infield
turf area (2900) from the entire infield turf / dirt area (10,000) for
the area of the dirt. This gives you about 7,000 square feet for the dirt
area. This assumes no grass on the foul area between home and the bases.
If you have grass on the foul
area by third and first, then the areas change by about 2000 feet. You
have 5000 square feet of dirt and about 5000 square feet for turf (2000
for foul area between home and bases and about 3000 for the infield turf).
Either way, the area of the
outfield turf is 36000 – 10000 = 26,000. You have 26,000 square
feet of outfield turf.
This
is long. The pictures might be all that you need!
Or if you would
like to see some great charts and tables with various baseball field dimensions,
including square footage, check out this article at Fraziers Field Repair.
http://www.fraziersfieldrepair.com/BaseballSoftballFieldDimensions.html
While you are there, you might want to surf this site. It's another
very good resource.
Now
that you know the square footage you can check here to see how much seed,
fertilizer,or dirt mix you need on your baseball or softball field.
