Baseball

Baseball is laid out from a single point at the back of home plate, and almost every figure on the field is fixed by rule from there. What is not fixed is the outfield: no governing body sets a standard distance to the fence, which is why two professional parks can have the same infield and nothing else in common. The figures on this page come from three rulebooks, and each is labeled as a rule or a recommendation.

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Dimensions and layouts

A professional infield is a 90 ft (27.43 m) square, and the pitcher’s plate stands 60 ft 6 in (18.44 m) from the rear point of home plate. Second base is fixed by tape at 127 ft 3 3/8 in (38.80 m) from that same point. Those three figures are MLB Rules 2.01 and 2.04, and the NFHS field diagram carries all three unchanged, so a US high school infield is the same size as a major league one. Little League’s Major Division is smaller by design: a 60 ft (18.29 m) square, a 46 ft (14.02 m) pitching distance and an 84 ft 10 in (25.86 m) diagonal.

One grass line is compulsory in professional baseball: the outer edge of the infield dirt sits on a 95 ft (28.96 m) radius from the center of the pitcher’s plate. Every other grass line is left to the club, and Little League leaves the grassed and bare areas entirely to each local league. The outfield is looser still. MLB sets a hard floor of 250 ft (76.20 m) to the nearest fence in fair territory, then calls 320 ft (97.54 m) down the foul lines and 400 ft (121.92 m) to center field preferable. Little League treats the fence distance as a local option and recommends 200 ft (60.96 m). The full table, with batter’s and catcher’s boxes, backstop distances and the three-way comparison, is in the baseball field dimensions, markings and layout guide.

Equipment

Bases are the figure that changed most recently. MLB Rule 2.03 moved the bag from 15 in to 18 in (0.46 m) square for the 2023 season, with a thickness of 3 to 5 in. Little League did not follow: Rule 1.06 still allows a bag of 14 to 15 in square and no more than 2 1/4 in thick. Home plate is the same five-sided shape everywhere, with a 17 in (0.43 m) edge facing the pitcher.

The mound differs by level. The professional mound is an 18-foot-diameter circle centered 59 ft from the back of home plate, with the pitcher’s plate 10 in (0.25 m) above home plate and a uniform slope of 1 inch of fall per foot. Little League’s is a 10-foot circle with the plate 6 in (0.15 m) up. The pitcher’s plate itself is 24 in by 6 in (0.61 m by 0.15 m) in MLB and NFHS play, and 18 in by 4 in (0.46 m by 0.10 m) in Little League. NFHS draws the same 18-foot mound circle as MLB but publishes no mound height in any free document, so none is claimed here.

Overhead plan

The same surface seen from straight above, drawn to scale. Nothing is foreshortened here, so every figure can be read off the drawing the way a tape measure would take it.

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Detail sheet

A rule book fixes more than the shape of the surface, and the rest of it is too small to draw at court scale: a mark a few centimetres long, a post standing a metre off the sideline, the clearance around the whole thing. Each one here has its own frame and its own scale.

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Official sources

Three governing bodies are cited on this page. MLB publishes the Official Baseball Rules with the field laid out in Rules 2.01 to 2.05 and Appendices 1 to 3; NFHS publishes a single free field diagram for high school play; Little League publishes its field layout and pitching mound drawings alongside its rule text.

• Major League Baseball, Official Baseball Rules, 2025 Edition, Rules 2.01 to 2.05 and Appendices 1 to 3.
• NFHS, Baseball Field Diagram, Rule 1-2, Diagram 2, 2019 NFHS Baseball Rules.
• Little League Baseball, Major/Minor Divisions Field Layout, current drawing.
• Little League Baseball, Major/Minor Divisions Pitching Mound Layout, updated 3/2/2018.
• Little League Baseball, Rules Instruction Manual, Playing Rules 1.04 to 1.08, 2018 edition.
• Little League Baseball, Field Specifications, current page.

All figures were checked against these documents on 5 September 2026. How each one is dated and marked as a rule or a recommendation is set out on the methodology page. If a number here looks wrong, report it through corrections.