The Diamond?

Baseball, as we now know it, has been played in America since the 1800s. While the inventor of the sport is up for debate, Alexander Cartwright is said to have invented the baseball field, as we know it today, in 1845.

Cartwright's New York Knickerbocker club trotted 9 defensive fielders out on to the field, with the infielders settling on a wide swath of dirt connecting first base to second base and second to third.

Two narrow strips of dirt connect home plate with first base and third base. The four bases became known as "the diamond." There is a problem with this description, however. When most people envision a diamond, they think of a type of rhombus with four sides of the same length and opposite angles of the same measure.

A baseball "diamond" is in fact a square. It is a rhombus, but with four sides of the same length and all four angles equal to 90 degrees. Ninety is a popular number on the diamond. The distance between the bases in 90 feet.



http://www.baseballfielddesign.com/index_files/500px-Baseball_diamond.png

More than 150 years later, kids and adults alike still refer to baseball fields as baseball diamonds.

[Measurement, Geometry]