There hasn’t been much you could count on in baseball in the last 128 years. But there is one thing that has not changed. You can always find the hill of the jug and the rubber jug where you left them the day / month / year / decade / century before:
Exactly 60 feet, 6 inches from the home plate.
Well, 128 years is a hell of a run. But now even the hill is moving. As of this summer, sources tell The Athletic, in eight Atlantic League parks from Kentucky to Long Island, that the pitcher’s rubber will creep 12 inches further off the plate than it has been since 1893 – to an unknown distance of 61 feet , 6 inches.
This is because, in collaboration with his friends at Major League Baseball, the independent Atlantic League is back on its old experimental tricks. And moving that rubber a foot back is only half the story.