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Books on Ballparks and other Baseball Matters
Sports Book Review

by Harvey Frommer

A member of the Society for American Baseball Research
more info

Ballparks: Then and Now by Eric Enders (Thunder Bay Press, 160 pages) and Take Me Out to the Ballparks by Josh Leventhal (Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 128 pages) in words and pictures, charts and stats provide a treasure chest of all kinds of information and insights as regards ballparks - major, minor, past and present.

The book by Enders takes a city by city look from Anaheim to Washington, D.C. of major league playing fields. The lifelong Dodger fan and baseball historian profiles each "field of dreams" with photos, narrative and boxed data. The Wrigley Field entry, for example, makes note of the fact that it opened on April 23,1914 and was known as Weegham Park (1914-1915), Cubs Park (19216-1925. A "Greatest Moment" is included for Wrigley and all the other field Enders looks at.

Take Me Out to the Ballparks is over-sized and odd sized. It is also more inclusive than Ballparks: Then and Now. Leventhal includes hundreds of color photos and drawings, stats of each stadium, and in his phrase "hot dogs, mascots, scorecards and much more." Each look at a ballpark also contains records and milestones, firsts, facts and figures. This is a book to keep for references and for browsing.

A scholarly look at one of the more infamous chapters in baseball history is Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal by Daniel A. Nathan (University of Illinois Press, 285 pages). As the author of Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball, I had a special interest in reading this book. It didn't disappoint, surveying as it did, how the scandal was remembered by journalists, historians, filmmakers, novelists and baseball fans. My book was even accurately quoted.

For those with an interest in stats, Leveling the Field by G. Scott Thomas (Black Dog and Leventhal, 555 pages) and The Complete Chicago Cubs by Derek Gentile, an award winning reporter for the Berkshire Eagle (Black Dog and Leventhal, 687 pages) are a couple of books to read and then rest on your baseball bookshelf. The latter has all manner of material related to the Cubbies and is a "must have" book for fans of the team. Leveling the Field is an encyclopedia of baseball's all time great performances as revealed through adjusted statistics. So if you interested in comparison and contrasts as arrived at through computer-generated formulas - this is the book to own.

Southern Illinois Press has come out with re-issues of two old classics written by Frank Graham: The Brooklyn Dodgers and The New York Yankees. The Dodger book was first published in 1945 and covers "Dem Bums" from 1883-1943. The Yankee book traces Bronx Bomber history from its beginnings in 1903 to the 1943 World Series. To read these books is to be placed in a time warp, but a lovely time warp.

ť Harvey Frommer is the author of 32 sports books, including "The New York Yankee Encyclopedia, "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," and "Growing Up Baseball" with Frederic J. Frommer. His "A Yankee Century: A Celebration of the First Hundred Years of Baseball's Greatest Team" will be published in paperback by Berkley Putnam this year.

ť More submissions