In the world of baseball analysis, probably my favorite topic is Ballpark Effects. More than anything else, the most obvious thing that differentiates Baseball from most other sports is the field. American football is played on a 100 yard long field, from grade school to the pros. Basketball courts do have some differences from the NBA to the International version, but they don't make the court longer or wider. Hockey rinks in the NHL are all the same size, international rinks just slightly bigger, but not so much that you'd notice on first glance.

But Baseball? The only rules to Baseball field design were was that the diamond had to have 90' sides. After that? All bets were off until 1958, when the minimum distance to the outfield corners was locked at 325' for new construction.

Currently there is some mild controversy over Yankee Stadium and their right field, which seems to be playing smaller than the stated distances. Places like @would_it_dong, which compares every home run to every stadium to see if it'd be a home run. Yankee Stadium has been coughing up a lot of "here, nowhere else" results.

But Boston's Fenway Park has The Green Monster, the 37' high wall in Left Field that has long been featured in hitters' dreams and pitchers' nightmares.

Most teams try to build to fit their park's quirks, and the Red Sox are certainly no exception. Right-handed hitters thrive in Fenway because of The Wall. The relatively short distance from home plate to the left field fence leads to batters using an almost exaggerated upwards swing. At Fenway, you don't have hit the ball far, just up. Cans of corn in other stadiums sail majestically above the fence.

But just as often, they don't, and this leads to what's termed a "wall double", a pop fly that instead of being caught in the middle of left field just bonks off the wall 30' feet up, giving the batter a "cheap hit."

Lefties with good bat control can also use the wall to their advantage. An inside-out swing from one-time Red Sox leadoff hitter Wade Boggs led to him hitting below .300 only once in 11 seasons with Boston, and leading the American League in batting average five times, the lowest average in those seasons being .357. His line drives that whacked off The Monster were a big reason why he hit .369 for his entire career in Fenway.

Conversely, flyball pitchers tended to suffer in Fenway: when you already pitch in such a way the batter gets the ball in the air, having that occur towards left field could make for a long night.

On the other hand, left fielders in Fenway had to be good on defense. Because of the construction of The Wall and various features on UT, like a ladder and the hand-operated scoreboard, rebounds and caroms could be wildly unpredictable... except to Boston players, who got used to them and often were able to hold a hitter to a single as a result.

So, yes, the Green Monster had rather strong effects on offense at Fenway. In recent years, Fenway has had a Park Factor score of 108 where 100 is average. Only Coors Field in Denver, with its thin air, Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark with its proclivity for allowing offense, scored higher. By way of comparison, Wrigley Field in Chicago with its horror stories of winds blowing balls all the way to Lake Michigan, scored 98.