Frayed Knot wrote: Definitely not a steal of home, Jackie's or anyone else's. Ceetar wrote: why are there two on deck circles. are those on deck circles? They're awfully close and only on the first base side. Neither one of those are on-deck circles. They were, in effect, on-deck mounds. They're not raised obviously, but hurlers would use those back in the day to throw to a plate that was near the backstop as a pre-game warmup. I guess they were considered preferable to the bullpen for whatever reason. There's one on the 3rd base side also. Not quite sure why there are two on the 1st base side (in addition to the batter's circles). I never heard this before. I do have a pic of Warren Spahn warming up on one, or more than likely posing on one (at Shea). It was my belief that 2 of the circles were used for a pre-game workout. Coaches hitting fungos to left and right field would stand in the circles up the baselines. And sometimes one would be used to hit fungos to outfielders, and the other one hitting groundballs to infielders (the one circle that is closest to home might only be for infield fungos-other two outfield). I don't know this for a fact but I figure coaches wore the grass out in the spots they would fungo from over the years, and eventually they decided to just create a small area w/no grass for him to hit from.