by Fredegar » Thu Oct 11, 2012 9:21 am
I seriously doubt any of those HS recommendations are mandatory. HS's have different budgets and some have limited field space so it may be impractical to conform to every recommendation. Other than 60' bases and the (currently) 43' pitching distance, which are mandatory, most everything else can only be recommended. Some HS fields are at City Parks, where the HS has little control over the dimensions. Some fields have 300' baseball fences, while some have no fences.
The point is that depending on where you live, it's likely that nobody "had to move home plate & the field away from the backstop". Having said that, since it is recommended and there was budget for it, someone obviously thought it was a good thing to do.