Pesky’s pole sits just 302 feet away from home plate at Fenway Park

Covers.com’s Ballpark Breakdown series investigates how a team’s home stadium affects your wagers. Every major league stadium will be looked at over the course of the summer. The fifth entry in the series is dedicated to the Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park.

Pesky’s pole sits just 302 feet away from home plate at Fenway Park, making it the shortest right-field porch in major league baseball.

The pole was officially named just last year, but the story behind it dates back half a century. It was named after former Boston Red Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky – a left-handed batter who hit just 6 career home runs at Fenway.

The light-hitting Pesky hit a game-winning home run for the Red Sox in 1946, a dinger that just squeaked into fair play past the pole.

Peksy’s pole is just one in a seemingly endless line of landmarks at baseball’s oldest active park (it opened on April 20, 1912). The most famous attraction, of course, is the Green Monster – a 37-foot-high, 240-foot-long wall sprawled across left field. It’s not much further to the Green Monster than it is to Pesky’s pole, just 310 feet down the left field line.

The dimensions favor left-handed hitters like Pesky, enabling them to hit home runs out to right even if they don’t catch the ball perfectly square.

Boston hasn’t taken full advantage of this cozy right field; the team has just three left-handed bats and switch-hitting Jason Varitek in its starting lineup. But that hasn’t stopped the Red Sox from boasting one of the top home offenses in the majors.

Red Sox batters are hitting .288 with an MLB-best .368 OBP at home this season. Boston is also second in the league in runs scored per game at home at 5.88. Their play has made them among the most profitable home teams in the majors. The Red Sox are 18-8 and have earned 5.79 units heading into Friday’s home series with the New York Yankees.

The Red Sox are also one of baseball’s best home over teams. They are 14-11 over/under at home this season, but 8-17 over/under on the road. They did the same thing last season, going 42-35-5 over/under at home and 36-42 on the road.

Fenway’s inviting dimensions down the foul lines make runs easier to come by, but that doesn’t mean a slick fielding team like the Red Sox (who committed the fewest errors in the majors last season) don’t benefit from playing there 81 times each year.

The biggest intangibles come in the outfield, where playing the ball off the wall can often be troublesome. Say what you want about the fielding of left fielder Manny Ramirez, no one else plays the ball better off the Green Monster.

There is also the matter of playing The Triangle, the aptly named area of center field where the wall angles out to form a triangle. A ball bouncing around there for too long can easily turn a double into a triple. A Kevin Youkilis hit found The Triangle on May 28 and, after being misplayed by the Cleveland Indians' Grady Sizemore, what would have been a double at any other park became an inside-the-park home run.

The furthest part of the triangle from home plate is 420 feet, and is usually given as the center-field distance despite actually being right-center field. True center field is 390 feet away.

It's just another wacky number that only makes sense at Fenway.