Book-a-Day Review: Ballpark

Ballpark: Baseball in the American City, by Paul Goldberger (Knopf, 2019)

Like a lot of New Year’s resolutions, this one didn’t make it past the fourth week. Just got too hard to sustain. Plus I had to prepare for my talk on Garden State All-Stars for the Northern New Jersey Chapter’s SABR Day event, during which time our brand new dog literally ate my homework/Power Point printout. But enough alibis. The road to hell is paved with good intentions…

I chose not to speedread through this one because it deserves careful attention, not unlike the details that go into building these mansions for the national pastime. Indeed, the purple prose rises to the occasion when discussing the ballparks or stadiums, depending on how you wish to describe what are essentially athletic offices.

Goldberger, who has written several books on the science and beauty of architecture, does a marvelous job in capturing the history — mostly anthropological — of how and why these structures are erected.

There’s so much more to think about it than just the cliched verdant fields. It’s the way the ballparks are built, it’s where they are built and the impact those decisions have on the surrounding neighborhoods, such as Wrigley Field, Ebbets Field,or Fenway Park (or Chavez Ravine, which displaced thousands of Mexicans living there at the time). I spent part of my youth just a few blocks away from where Ebbets once stood and for the life of me, despite all the aerial photography, I can’t picture how it was laid out.

The author follows a straight historical line, from the open fields that theoretically expand to infinity to the steel-and-concrete era of confined spaces, the “modern cathedrals,” cookie-cutter ballparks, right up to the retro fields which began with Camden Yards. There is always a good deal of political wrangling involved as well, which I always knew about but still found fascinating when reading about the battle between Walter O’Malley and Robert Moses over how, if, or even whether to build a new home for the Brooklyn Dodgers. And we all know how that turned out.

Ballparks isn’t necessarily a “fun” book; there’s little in the way of on-the-field history. But I would consider it an important book for anyone who’s a serious student of the game and if I ever get a chance to do a revised edition of 501, you can bet this one will be included.

Look for a “Bookshelf Conversation” with the author in the not-too-distant future.