Yankee Stadium hosts last baseball game. (strictly speaking, this isn’t exactly the same house)
on 09/22/2008 at 08:20 AM
"Survey says”
The term stadia comes from the plural of the Greek stadion, the word for a distance of 185 to 192 metres (607-630 ft). A very similar length is the modern furlong, or eighth of a mile, 660 ft. A “stadion” was also an athletic venue, with lengths laid out for competition and seats for spectators. The Latin stadium, stadia was a direct borrowing with the same meaning.
Distance over the ground was traditionally measured by long poles or rods laid successively end to end. The ancient Egyptians used rope for the same purpose. This practice is reflected in the traditional rod, pole or perch of 16.5 feet. This odd length came from dividing down an English mile of 5280 ft, first into furlongs of 1/8 mile or 660 ft, then into tenths, or chains, of 66 ft, and finally into quarters of this, or 16.5 feet. Four rods make a chain, ten chains a furlong, and 80 chains a mile. The Gunter’s chain of 100 iron links and length 66 ft was much easier to use and carry than an ungainly pole, and gave more accurate results. 10 square chains is an acre, so Gunter’s chain was closely related to traditional measures of distance and land areas. The engineer’s chain of 100 links, each 1 ft long, replaced Gunter’s chain, and was itself replaced by the 100 ft steel tape, which is an excellent and easily handled way to measure distances. Doing this is still called “chaining,” however, and the people who do it are called chainmen.
To further mess things up, them old Romans measured land distance by miles (milles) which to them were 1000 double paces (left right). They used a pace of 29 inches, and trained their armies to march that way. Thus a Roman Mile is 4854 feet. In a way this makes perfect sense; marching a standard mile with a heavy pack on feels a lot longer than it actually is.
This concludes today’s trivial bit of knowledge. We now return you to the regular comments.
Trivia: The one thing which Wikipedia can be relied upon to supply.
We had a similar situation here in Detroit a couple years back. The Tiger’s grounds at Navin Field - Briggs Stadium - Tiger Stadium was to closed down and demolished in favor of a new park across the street. I still think that last game was a bit rigged....
I still refuse to call the new stadium by it’s corporate name “Comerica Park”, especially since they closed their HQ and moved it to Texas or somewhere.... So it’s “New Tiger Stadium” to me.
"Comerica”? Jeez, that sounds like some kind of vaginal infection.
And I hate stadiums that changed their names all the time to reflect who owns them this year. We get that in NJ all the time with the Meadowlands. Every 3 or 4 years it has a new name I swear. Fuggedabowdit.
Heh..... maybe so. Actually, it’s a bank.
Then there’s the “Pine Knob” concert venue - a way for the ski hill to make some $$ in the off-season. Now it’s called “DTE Music Theater”, the DTE being itself a vile corporateization of the local utility “Detroit Edison”
At least Oldsmobile Park (home of the Lansing Lugnuts) is still acceptable.
09/22/2008 at 10:22 AM
