Ballpark: The Story of America's Baseball Fields » (Reprint)

Lynn Curlee, who received a Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book Award for Brooklyn Bridge, comes from a family of intense sports fans. His other books include Liberty, Ships of the Air, Into the Ice: The Story of Arctic Exploration, Rushmore, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Capital, and, most recently, Parthenon. He lives on the North Fork of Long Island, New York.

Lynn Curlee, who received a Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book Award for Brooklyn Bridge, comes from a family of intense sports fans. His other books include Liberty, Ships of the Air, Into the Ice: The Story of Arctic Exploration, Rushmore, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Capital, and, most recently, Parthenon. He lives on the North Fork of Long Island, New York.

If you love baseball, chances are you love one particular ballpark. Boston fans wax poetic about Fenway Park. Cubs fans are adamant that Wrigley Field is the classic ballfield. Busch Stadium is a hit with folks from Missouri, and Yankee fans are passionate about the House That Ruth Built....

Besides passionate fans, there's one other thing all ballparks — from the Union Grounds in Brooklyn built in 1862 to the Baltimore Oriole's Camden Yards built in 1992 — have in common: Each has its own vibrant and unique history.

In Ballpark, Sibert Honor Award winner Lynn Curlee explores both the histories and the cultural significances of America's most famous ballparks. Grand in scope and illustrations, and filled with nifty anecdotes about these "green cathedrals," Ballpark also explores the changing social climate that accompanied baseball's rise from a minor sport to the national pastime. This is a baseball book like no other.

Publishers Weekly

Curlee (Brooklyn Bridge) takes readers out to the ballparks in this high-spirited paean to the nation's legendary "green cathedrals." Along the way, he offers a concise yet conversational chronicle of modern baseball's origins, milestones, rituals and the feats of its superstars ("The history of the sport reflects the story of our country," he posits, "and even something of our national character"). The construction of ballparks began after the Civil War, when soldiers took the sport back home across the country, and the destruction by fire of many late-19th-century wooden "baseball palaces" paved the way for steel and concrete structures, beginning with Philadelphia's Shibe Park in 1909. The text also includes brief biographies, such as Babe Ruth, whose record crowds spurred the building of Yankee Stadium, as well as Jackie Robinson, his courageous entry into the segregated Major Leagues and its affects on the Negro Leagues. Curlee's paintings capture some bittersweet moments: when he mentions the late 1950s move of the Dodgers and the Giants to California, he depicts a brass band playing "Auld Lang Syne" next to the wrecking ball-painted to resemble a baseball-that would raze both Ebbets Field and, four years later, the Polo Grounds. The advent of expansion teams precipitated the "superstadiums," criticized by many as bland and impersonal. As a result, more character and retro features were incorporated into the 1992 design of Baltimore's Camden Yards and subsequent parks, which offered state-of-the-art amenities, while also "serving up a nostalgic baseball experience." That is, in fact, exactly what Curlee does so gracefully here, in words as well as spare, sparkling acrylic paintings. Fans of America's favorite pastime will happily pass time with this handsome book. All ages. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.