Ballpark: Baseball in the American City

Play ball! I will never forget the first time my brown eyes entered the friendly confines of Wrigley Field in Chicago and saw the glory of green grass and the shimmering diamond of dreams that makes baseball my favorite game. Earlier this year I saw the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati for the first time and was in hardball heaven for that glorious Saturday. While watching a Yankees game on MLBN I heard the Hall of Fame announcer Bob Costas speak with affection for Paul Goldberger's new tome "Baseball: Baseball in the American City." I read several reviews on the book and swiftly ordered it on Amazon. I am glad I did. Paul Goldberger is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has won a Pulitzer Prize for his architectural writing. If you love the trifecta of baseball, architecture and the American city you will adore this book. Goldberger shows how baseball was developed and expanded in an urban environment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in large conurbations such as Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and New York City. Jeffersonians green in the outfield represents our yearning for the rural infinity while the infield is emblematic of the busy city. Goldberger goes into detail explaining how the great green cathedrals were financed, built and their architecture imprinted on the footprint of the city itself. We learn of Boston's Fenway Park, Chicago's Wrigley Field andComiskey Park, Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Yankee Stadium in New York and up to today's parks such as Camden Yards in Baltimore, the Astrodome and new parks like Sun Trust in Atlanta and many more major league stadiums. The book is lavishly illustrated though the text is a bit dry and academic for some readers. An excellent addition to any fan's bookshelf on baseball. Highly recommended! Play Ball!

Paul Goldberger, “Ballpark: Baseball in the American City.” An architectural history of ball parks:• Wooden bleachers within a fenced enclosure (before and after the Civil War)• Fenced-in wooden grandstands with ancillary entertainment components including gambling, beer-gardens, and informal brothels (later in the nineteenth century)• Steel and concrete buildings with outfield fences – buildings in urban neighborhoods, buildings partially surrounding a greensward and partially with views of the neighborhood. (The early twentieth century – Ebbetts Field, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Forbes Field, etc)• Concrete stadia (Inter-war years: Yankee Stadium, Cleveland Municipal Stadium)• Football and baseball dual use suburban donuts (Post war years:Shea Stadium, Riverfront Stadium, Three Rivers Stadium)• Indoor stadia (Also post war: Astrodome, Kingdome)• Retro ball parks with modern amenities in an urban environment (Late twentieth century: Camden Yards, PNC)• Mall Parks with sanitized neighborhoods (Sun Coast, Busch, Wrigleyville)His notion is that ball parks work best when they offer the unambiguous outdoor country game played in an unambiguous urban building in a living urban environment. For myself I have been to ballgames at• Ebbetts Field (He thought it great)• Polo Grounds (He thought it not all that bad)• Yankee Stadium Number One (He thought it successfully monumental)• Shea Stadium (He thought it bad)• Yankee Stadium Number Two (He thought it had less character than Number One)• Fenway Park (He thought it great)• Camden Yards (He thought it great)• Oakland Alameda Coliseum (He thought it very bad)• Candlestick Park (He thought it very bad)• Three Rivers (He thought it very bad)• Yankee Stadium Number Three (He thought it successfully monumental combining Yankee history with modern amenities)• Citi Field (He thought it a nice retro park with modern amenities, but placed in what amounts to a suburban parking lot)The prose is surprisingly lively for a book that is inherently littered with architectural concepts.

I can't help but wonder about the magic I experience every time I take a seat at a ballpark to watch a ballgame.Of course, having become some sort of a history buff, curiosity takes hold of me as I spot this book about ballparks, written by an architect. Well, wouldn't that really be something...I just found it amazing how the author, with his writing, was able to intertwine the origins of baseball and the history of ballparks, with an architectural perspective, and clear up how this passion for green open baseball fields, and the way they were presented to us, the fans, became America's favorite pastime.

Great book.

The writing is excellent. Every story is well told in a fun and informative way. I was surprised how interesting the history about the design and locations of ballparks can be crafted. I especially liked the fact that the author has strong opinions and sees the connection of ballpark design to big treads that change over over time. He also has an excellent sense of how deep to go into details that make reading of this book a page turner and never gets stuck in too many or too few details.If you like baseball, this is a book that you will want to keep in your collection.

Delightful description and narrative of the parks that have been home to professional baseball, from the start to today. Readers from any part of the country that are home, or have been, to a MLB franchise have something to look forward to. From the East Coast/NYC dominated early years through the expansion to the mid-West, to the West Coast, to the modern ballparks this gives each stadium their due, even if it's a deserved, short, and well-explained dismissal. Quite a treat to read about the parks even when we can't visit them.

Gave it to my husband for a gift as he is a big baseball fan. I guess he enjoyed it.

An interesting read. It was bought as a present.