With too many blasts at the Bank, team will make left a little longer

The padding in left field has been removed. And two seasons after the opening of Citizens Bank Park, the hard hats are reappearing.

The Phillies, looking to make the dimensions at the Bank more neutral to hitters and pitchers, plan to remove the first two rows of seats in left field. That will move the warning track and fence back five feet and raise the fence from eight feet high to 101/2 feet.

Major League Baseball is looking at those plans, but they are expected to be approved.

"The [effect] of that, in our study of home runs, is between 18 and 22 [fewer] home runs per year," Phillies president David Montgomery said yesterday. "The real significance is having a 101/2-foot fence instead of an eight-foot fence."

The Phillies looked at video of every home run hit to left field in the last two seasons to get a better idea about what they needed to do.

"In charting the home runs, we feel that if those changes are made, it will help," Montgomery said. "It will bring us back to where we wanted to be."

The construction should cost a little more than $1 million, and the Phillies will lose from 194 to 198 seats. Those seats cost $22 each, but it is unclear how much it will affect the team financially.

That's because season-ticket holders who have seats in those first two rows will still have seats in the first two rows. In other words, everyone will be as close to the field as they are now. Unless there is a game in which the entire left-field section is full, the missing rows will not be a factor financially.

Phillies pitchers should like the fact that the ballpark could yield 18 to 22 fewer home runs per season, which would be about a 10 percent decrease from years past. There were 228 home runs hit at Citizens Bank Park in 2004 and 201 last season.

The 2006 Bill James Handbook said the Phillies' ballpark had a 119 home-run index in 2005, the third-highest in the National League. That meant it was 19 percent easier to hit a homer at the Bank than at a typical NL ballpark. Only Houston's Minute Maid Park (125) and Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park (121) had higher home-run indexes.

Citizens Bank Park had a 123 home-run index in 2004, which ranked third in the league behind Wrigley Field (138) and Arizona's Bank One Ballpark (130).

What are people saying about mortgages today:

Rates on 30-year mortgages edged down last week to a seven-month low. Mortgage-giant Freddie Mac reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.3 percent, down slightly from 6.31 percent two weeks ago. It put rates at the lowest level since they were at 6.24 percent the first week of March.

Bank of Hawaii, Central Pacific Bank, Territorial Savings Bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgages all cut their 30-year mortgage rates to 5.75 percent this week.

Most people think of a mortgage as a means to an end. After all, you buy a house, not a home loan. But a mortgage is much more than the path to homeownership. It is a financial instrument that must be managed, just like any other financial investment.