Chicken wire, homer heaven: Inside quirky London Stadium for Yankees-Red Sox

LONDON — Our greatest homegrown product appears on the way to England:

The home run.

The center field fence at London Stadium is 385 feet away (117.4 meters on this side of The Pond), which would be the shortest in the majors — though with a 16-foot wall MLB officials insist it will play closer to 402 feet.

Obviously nothing plays to script. Maybe the Yankees and Red Sox will enact pitcher’s duels on Saturday and Sunday. But the first clues about the greater likelihood were revealed with Yankees batting practice Friday. Let’s just say there is batting practice and then there is batting practice and this was the one that looked like a long drive contest in golf, suggesting the record-smashing homer pace afoot in North America will travel well

When Luke Voit left his hitting session this was our exchange: Me: “Ball carrying?” Him with his head tilted, an “are you kidding” mien and a wry smile: “Oh yeah.”

Yankees third base coach Phil Nevin: “The ball is flying out for sure.”

Yankees bullpen coach Mike Harkey with a giggle: “I’m suspecting there will be a few homers. (Aaron) Judge makes this place look small, but he makes every place look small. But if you were watching, say, Aaron Hicks’ batting practice the ball was carrying like crazy.”

Judge said, “I know we’ll have a lot of fun with it being 385 to center.” He noted the carry after his batting practice and said, “I’m just waiting to see (Gary) Sanchez hit the rings in center field. I feel like that’s going to be in play.”

Those rings are roughly 400 feet from home plate and 100 feet high. The rings are part of the overhang that circles the stadium. This is unlike when the NFL comes to Europe and a standard 100-yard football field is fitted. MLB had to work within perhaps the only facility in Europe that could comfortably configure a major league stadium and stands, and it will create quirks even for the teams that have the short right field porch and the Green Monster.

“It’s a new stadium so everyone is picking it apart,” Zack Britton said.

London Stadium is the home of West Ham United and, by rule, every seat in a Premier League stadium must be covered by an overhang to protect from rain. Thus — somewhat like Tropicana Field — balls could hit an overhang. In these games anything that hits the overhangs will be ruled a dead ball and a strike unless it clears the field of play — like what would occur if Sanchez actually hit the rings.

The overhangs above home plate appear particularly accessible and Sanchez was out with Nevin and catching instructor Jason Brown before batting practice standing on home plate and discussing the possibilities. MLB officials say Statscast data shows a pop would hit the overhang once every two games on average and be in play on a potentially catchable ball once every 11 games.

The backstop also looks particularly close, which would make advancing on passed balls/wild pitches more difficult. MLB officials though say it is a bit of an optical illusion created by the large foul territory and that the distance of 45 feet, three inches would be the 11th longest in the majors. Ah yeah, the foul territory. Think the Oakland Coliseum on steroids. No major league stadium approaches this amount of foul territory.

If homers hurt the pitchers then the expansive foul territory might create extra outs. Still, Aaron Boone said the team will have to think about extreme shifts because if, say, Didi Gregorius were the lone infielder on the left side, then the pitcher would be nearer to many foul pops than any infielder, moving pitching coach Larry Rothschild to suggest he will tell his charges, “Get ready to catch a foul ball.”

Masahiro Tanaka, who starts Saturday, said Japanese stadiums often have large swaths of foul ground, “so it is not new to me.”

Nevertheless, to familiarize himself to a strange mound Tanaka went unorthodox with about five minutes of soft toss from it Friday. He landed each time approximately where Usain Bolt crossed the finish line to win gold in an Olympic record at the 2012 Games. The teams’ clubhouses were constructed where the 200-meter warm-up track for the Olympics was.

The low lighting that is part of the overhang could prove blinding to outfielders, and the lights are so exposed that MLB said it drained the country of chicken wire — 53,000 feet — to protect the lights. In addition, there are many white seats speckled throughout the stadium that are part of a color pattern that spells West Ham. That would prove a troubling aspect for fielders trying to find the white ball, except 60,000-plus folks are expected to fill every seat both days (Dodger Stadium at 56,000 is the largest-capacity MLB stadium).

How will the 60,000-ish react? Half Yankees/half Red Sox? The Red Sox are the home team, but both will wear home uniforms — so iconic pinstripes for the Yankees.

The field turf should be familiar to the rivals since AL East foes Toronto and Tampa are two of the three teams that use it in the majors (Texas will also when it opens its new stadium in 2020). Still, Yankees personnel noted it has a skidding quality and will play fast (another advantage for hitters). On the downside for hitters only the Red Sox, Cubs and Phillies have less fair territory at home in square feet than London Stadium — so not as much room for hits to land, at least on one side of the fence.

The announcers — ESPN, Fox, John and Suzyn — will not be in enclosed booths, and thus the open-air conditions could lead to quite a bit of ambient noise going out live. MLB was scheduled to run a test Friday night to see if they could lower the speaker volumes as to not to disrupt broadcasts.

All of this has a bit of a slapdash feel to it because the field was not completed in full until the past few days — so no time for, say, a couple of Double-A teams to play to encounter unexpected consequences. Within five days of the conclusion of this series everything from backstop nets to the foul poles will be packed away until next year’s Part 2. So the Yankees and Red Sox will work out kinks to ease the way for Cardinals-Cubs in 2020.

The philosopher Didi summed up: “You have to play with what they give you.”

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