Take Me Out to the Ballpark: An Illustrated Tour to Baseball Parks Past and Present [Hardcover]

Josh Leventhal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 2003

The striking, stadium-shaped book that Parade magazine has called the best baseball book of the year is now better than ever, featuring hundreds of full-color photographs and illustrations of every Major League ballpark, famous stadiums from the past, and more. Also included are special sections on fans, mascots, hotdogs, and scoreboards. New features include PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, and Miller Park in milwaukee.

Crammed with the numerous statistics and tidbits of baseball information, Take Me Out to the Ballpark will hit a home run with legions of baseball fans.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A valuable and welcome companionÂ…TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLPARK celebrates the glory in the buildings and grounds where America's game has been played. --New York Daily News

No doubt the best baseball book of the year—a spectacular gathering of photos, statistics, reminiscences, facts and folklore. --PARADE Magazine --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

Take Me Out to the Ballpark is a wonderful tour through every park in the Major League, alongside dozens more stadiums from the minor leagues, negro leagues and baseball's past. Packed with hundreds of photographs and loaded with facts, stories and statistics, it's the ultimate resource for diehards and casual fans alike.

Virtually every stadium that has ever hosted a professional game is here and brought to life through detailed retelling of its history and construction, stories of the famous players who called it home, and accounts of the incredible events that have taken place on the field. Discussions of the peculiar variations among each ballpark's playing field - a trait unique to baseball among professional sports - examine what makes each park different and demonstrate how sometimes even the slightest variation can have a monumental effect on a game's outcome.

- Every stadium is displayed in huge full-color photographs and illustrations - over 250 in all - including every current Major League stadium, important minor league parks, famous negro league fields and notable stadiums from baseball's past.

- Each feature is crammed with the statistics baseball fans love - who got the park's first hit, total cost of construction, what date saw the biggest crowd, numbers of balls that have make it over the fences, and much more.

- Legends of all the famous athletes and their spectacular achievements, along with fun stories of unusual incidents and incredible occurrences, uncover the singular "personality" that makes each park unique.

- Special sections explore all the things that make a trip to the ballpark a one-of-a-kind experience, from hot dogs to Cracker Jacks, announcers to organists, scoreboards to mascots.

Covers every current major league park, including:

Shea Stadium - Fenway Park - Wrigley Field - Dodger Stadium - Oriole Park at Camden Yards - Yankee Stadium - Coors Field - The Skydome - The Ballpark in Arlington - Busch Stadium - Jacobs Field - and many more!

Historical features on bygone classics from baseball's past:

Ebbets Field - The Polo Grounds - Tiger Stadium - Comisky Park - The Astrodome - Forbes Field - League Parks, food at the park, the evolution of night baseball, and much, much more!

Plus region-by-region examinations of minor league parks and fields from the negro leagues, and fun features on the history of ballparks, food at the park, the evolution of night baseball, and much, much more! --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers; Revised edition (October 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579123325
• ISBN-13: 978-1579123321
• Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 8.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,874,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

111 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This book is a "double," not a home run, November 18, 2000

By 

"jm719" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Me Out to the Ballpark: An Illustrated Guide to Baseball Parks Past & Present (Hardcover)

Josh Leventhal's ambitious book really does make the attempt to present a lot of information about ballparks in a creative way -- but, frankly, other books accomplish the task in a more professional and complete manner.

The first thing that you will notice about "Take Me Out To The Ballpark" is the shape of the book itself. The cover and the pages are indeed shaped like a baseball park, where the spine and bottom edge are straight (like the foul lines of a field) and the other edges are rounded (like the outfield wall of a symmetrical stadium). I give the author and publisher credit for a creative effort, but sometimes the rounded edges of the pages cause important portions of photographs to be cut off. It also tends to make the layout of some of the pages cluttered.

While the text is enlightening, and some attempt (although not enough for my taste) is made to provide the information in a format that is consistent from park to park, it is troubling to me to see some mistakes and questionable decision making on which photos to include. For instance, an aerial shot of old Braves Field on page 20 is printed upside down (the airplane carrying the photographer was obviously beyond centerfield looking back toward home plate -- but the photo is printed on the page with home plate at the bottom of the shot). Even worse, a beautiful color shot of Camden Yards is printed backwards (i.e., the negative was turned the wrong way, making the mirror image of the scene appear in print) on page 15.

Regarding the decision making on which photos to include, I offer the two-page spread on "Minor League Ballparks of the Midwest" as an example. First, I don't understand the criteria employed to select exactly which parks are included in such sections. Second, one of the four parks highlighted in this section is the fairly unremarkable Midway Stadium in St. Paul -- yet two photos of it are shown here, plus it is the stadium that adorns the front (and back) cover of the book itself. There are also two shots of Victory Field in Indianapolis, yet both shots show similar orientations of the scenery. And worst of all, there are no shots of John O'Donnell Stadium in Davenport, even though it is one of the four parks highlighted in this section. O'Donnell, which sits right on the banks of the Mississippi River, provides one of the best views in all of baseball (hence it being included in BASEBALLPARKS.COM's "Ten Must-See Parks" list), yet there are no photos at all of this park in "Take Me Out To The Ballpark."

To be fair, there is a lot of enjoyable information in this book. The parks of the Majors are fairly well covered, and features on upcoming parks are also included. However, there are several other books I would recommend more highly than this one. For instance, "The Ballpark Book" by Ron Smith and published by The Sporting News, is more complete, better organized and more graphically pleasing -- and it's every bit as up-to-date. And on the topic of ballpark history, "Diamonds -- The Evolution of the Ballpark" by Michael Gershman and "Lost Ballparks" by Lawrence Ritter are more enlightening. And perhaps the best book ever written on baseball parks is "Green Cathedrals" by Philip Lowry, although this book, sadly, is now out of print.

So while "Take Me Out To The Ballpark" has a great deal of interesting information and quite a few excellent photos of new and old parks, there are better books out there on baseball parks.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wrigley Field high above sea-level? Dude!, August 27, 2001

By 

Barry M. Daniels (Chicago, Il USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Me Out to the Ballpark: An Illustrated Guide to Baseball Parks Past & Present (Hardcover)

There is some good information in this book, and some good pictures, but there are a number of inaccuracies that are disturbing (I take my ballpark history seriously). Consider the description of Wrigley Field as "high above sea level" and how that affects the ball flight. Dude, last time I looked, 600 feet is not high above sea level...maybe you meant the ballpark in Denver. Again, that is just ONE of the misleading inaccuracies. This is a good book, but not for serious ballpark afficionados like myself.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take Me Out to the Ballpark, July 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Take Me Out to the Ballpark: An Illustrated Guide to Baseball Parks Past & Present (Hardcover)

Josh Leventhal has reseached all the ballparks from the start of the majors to present times. All the stadiums your fathers and yourselfs have grown up with are all in this book like Fenway Park in Boston and the Polo Grounds in New York. With well written information and pictures that make you feel like you have grown up with this ballpark in your own hometown. This masterpiece of a book communicates with you what it takes to own a major league ballpark in todays world. From groundskeeeping to conscession sales you will truly get the idea of how a ballpark works! This is a 5 star dream come book to baseball lovers!