Books about Ballparks from Amazon.com

View the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction

"Along with his astute social scientific insight, Borer also includes plenty of first-person accounts of the ballpark from Red Sox greats like Carl Yastrzemski and Johnny Pesky and from regular Bostonians and out-of-town baseball fans. This ability to intermingle scholarly research with America’s beloved pastime has allowed Borer to write an astute academic treatise that has the appeal of a consumer sports pub."
—Publishers Weekly

"Borer assesses the attraction of Fenway Park through his own expert lens. The results . . . will prove invaluable not only to Red Sox and more general baseball scholars but also to students of urban life, the organization of limited inner-city space, social psychology and collective memory, how a baseball park can become a cultural shrine, and a cohorts shared values—not to mention Fenway's contributions to our understanding of fandom.
—Library Journal

"Boston's Fenway Park has become as valued as any star player in those cities and as much an attraction as the teams themselves. Borer, a sociologist and lifelong New Englander, explores the history of Fenway and its place in Bostons culture through research and interviews with players, stadium personnel, fans, and team owners...[H]e explains Fenway's place in the culture as an example of identity continuity. Fenway is an emotional anchor for fans in the sense that it encompasses a part of an individuals past and present."
—Booklist

"Borer has captured the magic of Fenway Park. "
—Doris Kearns Goodwin

"Even Yankee fans will have much to consider from this book, published so soon after the Red Sox curse has ended. This is an important work of the sociology of sport and of urban sociology."
—Gary Alan Fine, author of With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Pre-adolescent Culture

Even if you don't already love the Red Sox, you'll love this account of the stories people tell about why Fenway matters.
—Nancy T. Ammerman, author of Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives

"[Faithful to Fenway is] a must-have item for the Red Sox fans who champion their old stadium despite its uncomfortable seats."
—Portland Press Herald

The Green Monster. Pesky's Pole. The Lone Red Seat. Yawkey Way. To baseball fans this list of bizarre phrases evokes only one place: Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. Built in 1912, Fenway Park is Americas oldest major league ballpark still in use. In Faithful to Fenway, Michael Ian Borer takes us out to Fenway where we sit in cramped wooden seats (often with obstructed views of the playing field), where there is a hand-operated scoreboard and an average attendance of 20,000 less fans than most stadiums, and where every game has been sold out since May of 2003. There is no Hard Rock Caf (like Torontos Skydome), no swimming pool (like Arizonas' Chase Field), and definitely no sushi (which has become a fan favorite from Baltimore to Seattle). As Borer tells us in this captivating book, Fenway is short on comfort but long on character.

Faithful to Fenway investigates the mystique of the ballpark. Borer, who lived in Boston before and after the Red Sox historic 2004 World Series win, draws on interviews with Red Sox players, including Jason Varitek and Carl Yastrzemski, management, including Larry Lucchino and John Henry, groundskeepers, vendors, and scores of fans to uncover what the park means for Boston and the people who revere it. Borer argues that Fenway is nothing less than a national icon, more than worthy of the banner outside the stadium that proclaims, Americas Most Beloved Ballpark. Certainly as one of New Englands greatest landmarks, Fenway captures the hearts and imaginations of a deferential and devoted public. There are T-shirts, bumper stickers, banners, and snow globes that honor the ballpark. Fenway shows up in popular films, novels, television commercials, and in replicated form in peoples backyards—and coming in 2008 to Quincy, Massachusetts, is Mini-Fenway Park, a replica stadium built especially for kids.

Full of legendary stories, amusing anecdotes, and the shared triumph and tragedy of the Red Sox and their fans, Faithful to Fenway offers a fresh and insightful perspective, offering readers an unforgettable pilgrimage to the Mecca of baseball.

.
Price: $10.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Featuring hundreds of full-color photographs and illustrations of every Major League ballpark, famous stadiums from the past, and dozens of Minor and Negro league parks, Take Me Out to the Ballpark has surely earned its place as one of the most beloved baseball books. New stadiums in this completely revised and updated edition include Citizens Bank Ballpark (Philadelphia), PETCO Park (San Diego), and the newly renovated RFK Stadium (Washington, D.C.) home to the Washington Nationals.

Crammed with the statistics baseball fans love, Take Me Out to the Ballpark will hit a home run with legions of new readers this fall..
Price: $9.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Before he hit 400 home runs...
Before he was named
American League MVP...
Before he was AROD to
millions of fans...
He was Alex.

Just a kid who wanted to play baseball more than anything else in the world.

Baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez has drawn on his own childhood experiences to create this exciting picture book. It's the story of a boy named Alex who knows what it's like to swing at a wild pitch or have a ball bounce right between his legs. Alex is determined not to let his mistakes set him back—even if it means getting up at the crack of dawn to work on his hitting and fielding before school each day!

Full of the spirit of determination and joy in the game that put AROD in a league of his own, Out of the Ballpark is a gift from a great sports hero to every young player who dreams of becoming a star.

.
Price: $4.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Where there are ballparks," writes Tom Stanton in The Final Season, his wistful meditation on baseball and family, "there are memories ... I could never go to Tiger Stadium without feeling the ghosts of history about me...." In 1999, the season of that noble ballpark's last stand, Stanton set out to make peace with those ghosts by attending all 81 Tiger home games. He wasn't sure what he was looking for when he started, but what he finds in the end is much more personal than anything he sees between the foul lines.

Conceived as a game-by-game journal, The Final Season is filled with baseball. Stanton steps up with graceful musings on the game, the park, the Tigers and their history, and, most spiritedly, a pair of living legends--former right fielder Al Kaline and announcer Ernie Harwell. But it's Stanton's thoughts about family--his own family and how the game and the ballpark have connected generations--that truly resonate. In his prose, this lovely old rust bucket of a ballpark, this repository of so many memories, becomes metaphor.

Fittingly, Stanton takes his father to the final game. "I've noticed something today," he writes of the experience. "It's not the seventy- and eighty-year-old men who are wiping their eyes. It's the generation that came after them. And we're hurting not only for the loss of this beautiful place, but for the loss of our fathers and grandfathers--belatedly or prematurely. The closing of this park forces us to confront their mortality, and when we confront their mortality we must confront our own.... A little bit of us dies when something like this, something so tied to our lives, disappears." --Jeff Silverman.
Price: $5.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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..
Price: $3.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Generations after its demise, Ebbets Field remains the single most colorful and enduring image of a baseball park, with a treasured niche in the game's legacy and the American imagination.

In this lively story of sports, politics, and the talented, hilarious, and charming characters associated with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Bob McGee chronicles the ballpark's vibrant history from the drawing board to the wrecking ball, beginning with Charley Ebbets and the heralded opening in 1913, on through the eras that followed. McGee weaves a story about how Ebbets Field's architectural details, notable flaws, and striking facade brought Brooklyn and its team together in ways that allowed each to define the other.

Drawing on original interviews and letters, as well as published and archival sources, The Greatest Ballpark Ever explores the struggle of Charley Ebbets to build Ebbets Field, the days of Wilbert Robinson's early pennant winners, the eras of the Daffiness Boys, Larry MacPhail, and Branch Rickey, the tumultuous field leadership of Leo the Lip, the fiery triumph of Jackie Robinson, the golden days of the Boys of Summer, and Walter O'Malley's ignominious departure.

With humor and passion, The Greatest Ballpark Ever lets readers relive a day in the raucous ballpark with its quirky angles and its bent right-field wall, with the characters and events that have become part of the nation's folklore..
Price: $12.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Few ballparks still in use can boast of hosting both Babe Ruth and Vince Lombardi during their playing days. Muzzy Field in Bristol, Connecticut, is one of them.

Tucked away in the woodsy corner of a public park within the once-gilded boundaries of a great manufacturing city, Muzzy Field's illustrious history began as a charitable land donation in 1912. With the financial backing of the sports-minded management at New Departure Manufacturing, the field became home to one of the area's strongest semiprofessional baseball teams that welcomed some of the greatest athletes who ever played the game-from Ruth to Martín Dihigo and many others. The surging popularity of football in Bristol brought to town the legendary Lombardi and a handful of future Hall of Famers who helped shape the sport in the 1930s and 1940s.

From the earliest days, the colorful stories of the great barnstorming era of professional sports defined what has become the grand old dame of New England ballparks. In Muzzy Field, Douglas S. Malan relates many little-known tales from a time when it was a bustling epicenter of superb drama and a destination for the immortals of sport.

.
Price: $13.72 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In A Mathematician at the Ballpark, professor Ken Ross reveals the math behind the stats. This lively and accessible book shows baseball fans how to harness the power of made predictions and better understand the game. Using real-world examples from historical and modern-day teams, Ross shows:
• Why on-base and slugging percentages are more important than batting averages
• How professional odds makers predict the length of a seven-game series
• How to use mathematics to make smarter bets

A Mathematician at the Ballpark is the perfect guide to the science of probability for the stats-obsessed baseball fans—and, with a detailed new appendix on fantasy baseball, an essential tool for anyone involved in a fantasy league..
Price: $1.24 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The 2009 Take Me Out to the Ballpark Calendar highlights thirteen of the most beloved ballparks from the United States and Canada. Every month presents a stunning full-color photograph along with a brief history of the park and lots of anecdotes celebrating the stadium's famous features and endearing idiosyncrasies. There's also a baseball birthday for every day of the year, plus international holidays..
Price: $7.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]