Retro Ball Parks: Instant History, Baseball, New American City (Sports & Popular Culture) [Hardcover]

Daniel Rosensweig (Author)

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About the Author

Daniel Rosensweig is a professor in the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Program at the University of Virginia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press; 1 edition (February 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572333510
• ISBN-13: 978-1572333512
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #158,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars new baseball parks and urban culture, February 28, 2005

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Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Retro Ball Parks: Instant History, Baseball, New American City (Sports & Popular Culture) (Hardcover)

A work in the publisher's series Sport and Popular Culture, "Retro Ball Parks" looks at the urban phenomenon of the building of new, state-of-the-art, baseball stadiums to try to bring back this sport as it is viewed nostalgically. These are the stadiums built in cities around the country usually with some public funds and big tax breaks and other economic favors to the team owners. They are characterized by costly suites for corporate and well-to-do fans, rising ticket prices for all levels of regular seats from boxes to bleachers, moveable roofs and other features to provide comfort for the fans, and corporate logos lining the walls of the playing fields. Rosensweig is interested not only in how these stadiums promising revivals of urban centers come to be out of aspects of contemporary culture and political and economic interests; and also in the peculiar, particularly postmodern, notion of authenticity regarding baseball such stadiums are supposed to revive. In many cases, new businesses have sprung up around the new stadiums attempting to replicate neighborhoods that have been torn down to make way for them. Rosenweig's feelings on this phenomenon he covers are seen in the title of his introduction--"Cheap Grace." The author did most of his research in Cleveland, where the Cleveland Indian's Jacobs Field was built as the anchor of the Gateway Developmental District. "The Gateway serves as a fascinating case study of the cultural shifts enacted by the transformation of a city's economic base from local commerce and manufacturing to recreational tourism." Stadiums in other cities are brought in as well, notably the Baltimore Orioles' Camden Yards, the major urban stadium project giving rise to the others. Rosenweig is a professor of Inter-Disciplinary Studies at the U. of Virginia.