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Home Plate

© Copyright 1999, Jim Loy

Here is a picture of home plate, as apparently defined by the Little League Rule Book. Home plate has three right angles, two at the top and one at the bottom. Of course, the diagram on the left is impossible (The bottom side is not 12 inches, but 12.0208... inches). See The Pythagorean Theorem. Other rule books give more realistic dimensions. They do not give a length for the diagonal side, but instead give the height of the bottom isosceles right triangle (draw a horizontal line connecting the bottom of the two vertical lines in the diagram) as 8.5 inches. The above flaw in the Little League Rule Book was apparently pointed out by M. J. Bradley, in Mathematics Magazine, in 1996.

By the way, although a "baseball diamond" is called a diamond, it is technically a square.

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