How to build a pitcher's mound

Thinking about building a pitcher's mound in your backyard this year? Or are you responsible for fixing the team mound this season? Here are some tips for doing it correctly.

A regulation pitcher's mound is 18 feet in diameter, the center of which is 59 feet from the back of home plate. The pitcher's plate (or pitching rubber as it is commonly called) is 18 inches behind dead center of the mound. The slope from the rubber shall begin 6 inches in front of the rubber and will slope toward home plate 1 inch for every foot.

The rubber rests 6 inches inside the front edge of a level area 5 feet wide and 34 inches deep and shall not be more than 10 inches higher than the playing field. This was not always true, however. During different periods in baseball history, the mound had been much taller.

The mound in Philadelphia's Shibe park, for example, was rumored to be 20 inches high at one time, and the mounds throughout baseball in the late 60s were as high as 16 inches. It wasn't until 1969 that it was lowered to today's standard.

The original rules stipulated that the pitching rubber be 45 feet from the plate. It has been moved back twice, first to 50 feet, then to it's present day measure in 1893, presumably to give batters a better chance to hit and/or get out of the way of errant pitches. Daniel Adams, the first chairman of the Committee on Rules and Regulations, was the man who claimed to have set the original 45 foot distance. It has been said that the precise distance it stands today was the result of a measuring error (it was supposed to be 60 feet) and that they simply decided to leave it.

Additional history of the pitching mound comes from statistician Bill Deane, who says, "The first mention of the mound in the official baseball rules appears in 1903. Installed "to prevent trickery," rule 1, section 2 required that "the pitcher's plate shall not be more than 15 inches higher than the base lines or home plate."

The height was reduced to 10 inches in 1969.