Ok i have seen pics of my field in school and fields in compitions the 1st pic is from the tourment in orlando
notice how the atlas ball basicly touchs the bar now the 2nd pic is at my schools pratice field http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c360/volcom248/102_1801.jpg notice how are atles ball just barly touchs the bar now the last pic is from Arizona Championship match http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c360/volcom248/field.jpg now see how the atlas ball completey can not touch the bar so wat is the height of the bar cause that would mess people up now wouldent it?
It might not be the bar–it may be the Atlas ball. If the ball isn’t the right size (as I recall hearing about the Arizona tournament), then the bar is obviously going to look taller.
To me, it appears that the issue may not be with the bars, but with the Atlas balls themselves. Nothing makes the ball expand to the perfect size, and therefore it will vary in every playingfield. However, that is just my opinion.
the third picture the ball does look smaller.
Although the bar appears to be at different heights they may actually be at the same height just because the angle that the pictures were taken from are different.
just my thoughts
Yeah, it looks to me that the size of the atlas ball is the problem. In the first pic, the atlas ball looks much bigger in relation to the softballs than in the other two pics. It would probably be quite hard to get all of the atlas balls the same size on all of the fields at all of the competitions.
It is almost certianly the Atlas ball that is differing in heights. I remember back in 2004 that the atlas ball would deflate somewhat over the course of a few days. We fixed it by making a little template which we could set the ball in while we pumped it up all the way to 36".
Regardless, great catch man.
It’s all in the field specs. Go here, then right-click on Field Specs & Documentation, and save the specs to your local disk. Page 5 of the Field Specs drawing shows the height as 32 inches, measured from the platform surface to the top of the bar. Since the bar is made of 0.85 inch diameter pipe, clearance under the bar is nominally 31.15 inches. Page 7 of the Field Components Mods drawing shows the Atlas ball diameter as 30 inches. So nominally the Atlas ball clears the bar by 1.15 inches.
Rule <G11> says field tolerances may be as much as +/- one inch. So in the worst case if the Atlas ball diameter was 31" and the bar height was 31", then the ball would not clear.
To keep this from happening at the St. Louis FVC Championship, we used a 30 inch gage made of good grade plywood to verify that no Atlas balls were oversized, and adjusted inflation accordingly. You’ve probably noticed that they aren’t generally round (thats why they don’t roll straight), so we gaged the maximum width.