Baseball Shorts: Dome

With the Astrodome, baseball got a new phenomenon in the sixties. Back then it was regarded the eighth wonder of the world. Nowadays, domed stadiums are a common thing in baseball. Think about the Skydome, Tropicana Dome, T-Mobile Park, Minute Maid Park and the newest of them all, Globe Life Field or the Tokyo Dome, Met Life Dome, or the Nagoya Dome in Japan. Here are some expressions that are related to domes.

First of all we have Domestand. The homestand in a domed ballpark.

Then Dome-field advantage. The word refers to the alleged advantage a home team of a domed stadium has. Think about the fans and the noise they can make inside a domed ballpark. A good example of that were the Minnesota Twins fans in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Think about the familiarity the home team has with the dimensions and the physical circumstances in a domed ballpark.

And last but not least the Dome Dong, Domer or Dome run. A home run hit in a domed ballpark. A good example were the cheap home runs that were hit in the Kingdome of the Seattle Mariners. Not bothered by wind and humidity, for some batters it is easier to hit a home run in a domed ballpark. It is implied that a dome run would not be a home run in a traditional open-air ballpark. According to Raymond Mungo, author of Confessions from Left Field, there should be a separate statistical category for dome runs as “it’s not quite fair for a Kingdome home run to count as much as a real one.”