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Storied Stadiums: Baseball's History Through Its Ballparks
Storied Stadiums Baseball's History Through Its Ballparks Author:Curt Smith Among the holiest shrines to baseball are Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and, of course, Yankee Stadium. But there have actually been more than 125 major league ballparks past and present, each contributing its own distinctive charm to the sport, or in some cases, marring the beauty of the game. Acclaimed baseball historian Curt Smith chronicles th... more »e history of the American pastime through the stories of its early fields, grandstands, and modern stadiums. In a kinetic prose that is as full of surprises as a wind-aided knuckleball, he takes us through the era of the great wooden palaces that grew from modest beginnings soon after the Civil War. From these early examples he shifts to baseball's golden era with the construction of its most classic parks, which he calls Xanadus of personality; then on to the all-purpose cookie-cutter stadiums begun in the 1960s, stadiums to feed many sports but which fed none well; and finally on to the recent resurgence of classic ballpark themes, urban, personal, and unorthodox, that are taking the game into the future. Each diamond along the way is described with stories of the players and teams who performed on it, and the fans in the grandstands.« less