Robin Roberts Stadium

The home of the WPBL, Robin Roberts Stadium, has a couple of unique park effects that have already shown up in the early games.

First is the lights. All but the weekly Saturday matinee are played under the lights, and the field is plenty bright enough. But the lights are lower than in a typical ballpark, causing both infielders and outfielders to regularly lose balls in the lights. It affects all teams equally, but if I were coaching, I’d have my players practicing under the lights on Monday and Tuesday nights (no games) until they worked out strategies for dealing with the problem.

Second is that Robin Roberts features a “turtle back” infield, the edges of which slope sharply downward 18 inches into the outfield. This is a huge challenge for infielders on deep ground balls or outfielders coming in on shallow flies. Again, I think the only solution here is lots of reps until the defense learns to deal with this obstacle. But I wonder if it will mess up the players when they play on a more traditional diamond?