Ballpark: Baseball in the American City

 

Ballpark: Baseball in the American City

Paul Goldberger

Knopf, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-307-70154-1

(Amazon)

Read by the author in 2023, purchased for $14.16

"One who attends a stadium is guilty of spilling blood. Rabbi Nathan allows it for two reasons: he can shout and save lives, and he can testify that a wife can remarry." (Tosefta Avodah Zarah 2:7)

During the Roman period, there were a handful of amphitheaters built in the Land of Israel, used for gladiator games and other public spectacles. These were places of bloodshed, as well as associated with Roman culture, so attendance was frowned upon. In an essay, "Buildings for Entertainment," printed in Daniel Sperber's The City in Roman Palestine, Zeev Weiss discusses the location of these amphitheaters. He writes: 

"In most cases theaters were situated within the urban infrastructure, whereas hippodromes and amphitheaters were located on the outskirts...Theaters were usually built when the city was founded and as public buildings were being constructed in its center. Hippodromes and amphitheaters were generally added later, when the center was already crowded with public buildings and unable to accommodate another massive structure. Moreover, hippodromes and amphitheaters could hold many more people than theaters could hold and might have been a potential site of the outbreak of riots. Therefore it was deemed preferable to located them outside the city proper." 

Paul Goldberger's book on ballparks revolves around many of the same issues. He tells the history of professional baseball parks in (mostly) American cities, with the central thesis that a park must serves as rus in urbe, a rustic setting with a city. He locates this urge within the trend for pleasure grounds and picturesque cemeteries that began appearing in cities in the first half of the 1800s. 

For a ball park to meld city and country, it should be woven into the city fabric, be exposed to the sky, and have a view of the city and/or scenery beyond. Much like the theaters in ancient cities, much of this depends on city planning, the mores of urban planning at the time, as well as land price/availability and concerns about arriving and department from the game. In the case of baseball, Goldberger considers several stages, which can basically be reduced to 1. classic parks that meld with their neighborhoods 2. the dark ages of dual-use, concrete donut stadia in the suburbs 3. the post-Camden Yards renaissance. In addition, he does spend some time on the earliest fields, and a bit more on the most recent trends. 

As a Blue Jay fan who was at peak baseball-loving age when SkyDome opened, I enjoyed reading about that stadium. Goldberger treated Toronto's park fairly, though I tend to see it as an excited nine-year-old watching an ascendant team on the way to winning back-to-back World Series. The last time I was there for a game, nearly two decades ago, I got to watch Roy Halladay throw. Goldberger points out how the massive SkyDome and the towering CN Tower help balance out one another.